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MORE NOTES FROM 

UNDERLEDGE 



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LIBP a*V n1 0OH6RF.SS 

SEP 2? 1904 

CLASS a XXo. Na 

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Copyright, igo4 

BY 
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 



Published September, 1Q04 



H 

X 



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r 



3 



To the memory of 
SARAH PORTER 

t( the lady bf the manor," in grateful 
recognition of unbounded neigh- 
borly kindness and good-fellowship. 



NOTE 

Some of the papers in this volume have 
heretofore appeared in periodicals, and the 
thanks of the author are due to the editors 
of the Farmington Magazine, the New York 
Times, the Outlook, the Hartford Post, 
Lippincotfs Magazine, Our Animal Friends, 
and the Chap Book for permission to repub- 
lish them here. All these, however, have been 
subjected to careful revision since their origi- 
nal appearance, with consequent changes, in 
some instances changes of considerable im- 
portance. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 


PAGE 


I. 


TUNXIS 


I 


II. 


AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING 


8 


III. 


FARMINGTON (CONNECTICUT) EIGHTH 






YEARS AGO .... 


19 


IV. 


UNDERLEDGE .... 


65 


V. 


THE FOG 


73 


VI. 


WAITING FOR THE RAIN 


79 


VII. 


THE WIND 


84 


VIII. 


ROVER 


89 


IX. 


TITUS ANDRONICUS 


94 


X. 


RUMEX AND PLANTAGO . 


99 


XI. 


— AND RHUS TOXICODENDRON 


103 


XII. 


WISHES 


IOQ 


XIII. 


THE MINERS 


115 


XIV. 


COMIN' THRO' THE RYE 


. 120 


XV. 


KICKING AS A FINE ART 


123 


XVI. 


PROVE ALL THINGS J HOLD FAST THAI 






WHICH IS GOOD 


132 


XVII. 


OPEN SESAME .... 


136 


XVIII. 


AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER? 


141 


XIX. 


IN THE HEART OF THE STORM 


146 


XX. 


CHEATING THE EYES 


152 


XXI. 


AN IMPRESSION .... 


156 


XXII. 


MY SCULPTORS .... 


159 


XXIII. 


THE CHIMNEY SWALLOWS 
ix 


165 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 

XXIV. 

XXV. 

XXVI. 

XXVII. 

XXVIII. 

XXIX. 

XXX. 

XXXI. 

XXXII. 

XXXIII. 

XXXIV. 

XXXV. 

XXXVI. 

XXXVII. 

XXXVIII. 
XXXIX. 

XL. 
XLI. 
XLII. 



KITTIWINK 

MY SPORTING COLUMN : I 
MY SPORTING COLUMN : II 
AN IRIDESCENT DREAM 
HOW TO ORIENT ONE'S SELF 
A FAIR DAY 

lamb's tales 

the wasps 

water, water everywhere 

only the stars 

the lights in the valley 

THE TOWN FARM 

THE SENSE (OR THE NONSENSE 

COLOR .... 
THE LATE JACK FROST 
UN MAUVAIS QUART D'HEURE 
MADEMOISELLE PREFERE ET ] 

MOISELLE JEANNE 
THE PASSING OF THE PUMP 
THE GUEST BOOK 
OVER AND UNDER THE SNOW 



?) OF 



PAGE 
168 
175 
I80 
190 
195 
205 
213 
223 
225 
231 
238 
244 

247 
253 
260 

268 
277 
297 
305 



MORE NOTES FROM 
UNDERLEDGE 



Anacharsis coming to Athens, knocked at Solon's door, and 
told him that he, being a stranger, was come to be his guest, 
and contract a friendship with him j and Solon replying, "It is 
better to make friends at home," Anacharsis answered, 
" Then you are at home, make friendship with me." 

— Plutarch. 



MORE NOTES FROM 
UNDERLEDGE 

i 

TUNXIS 

TUNXIS CEPUS, or Unxis Sepus, 
— "the village at the bend of the lit- 
tle river," — such was the name un- 
der which this place first appeared 
upon the written record. I am frequently im- 
pressed by the resemblances, and equally by the 
contrasts, between its situation and that of 
Selborne. Of the similarities, perhaps the 
strongest is " The Hanger," the belt of wood 
running along the ledge. At Selborne, how- 
ever, this was composed of beech trees — " the 
most lovely of all forest trees," White calls 
them, and I quite agree with him. These we 
cannot rival. Directly behind the cottage I 
found one beech of moderate size, perhaps a 
foot in diameter near the root, which was 
being rudely treated by an uncouth chestnut 
that had stretched great arms around it, with 
a gesture rather aggressive than caressing. 
The chestnut I caused to be removed, piece- 



TUNXIS 

meal, because only so could serious injury to 
the beech be prevented, and I hope that the 
latter will profit by the relief. I have planted 
some others, but ill fortune has attended them, 
and even though a better day should dawn, I 
cannot expect ever to sit under their drooping 
branches. 

The other trees in that portion of the wood 
which dominates Underledge are in great 
variety, chestnut, oak, and ash predominating, 
and of all sizes and ages up to about fifty or 
sixty years. There are no. very large trees, 
but a number of fair size, intermingled with 
seedlings and saplings, and in some places 
shrubs of smaller growth, especially the wych 
hazel and the prickly ash, both of which are 
numerous. All these maintain themselves 
under somewhat adverse circumstances, grow- 
ing as they do between the broken fragments 
which form the talus of the trap ledge which 
here represents the chalk cliff at Selborne. 
The pigeon berry and the hepatica clothe the 
surface wherever they find enough earth to 
support them. Growing in the soil on the top 
of the ledge, there are a few moderate-sized 
silver pines and hemlocks, at the foot of which 
I have planted the trailing arbutus with some 
promise of its survival, and beyond, there is a 
ragged pasture somewhat overgrown with 
small cedars, sumachs, and white birches, and 
carpeted with cinquefoil, buttercups, wild 



TUNXIS 

strawberries, and a little grass, excepting 
where the rocky framework protrudes, as it 
does in many places. The top of the hill is 
but a short distance beyond the ledge, and it is 
not much higher. 

At the southwestern end of my part of the 
ledge, near Sunset Rock, the trees are smaller, 
and there is a ragged bit that I am very fond 
of; mostly small cedars, very dilapidated, moss- 
grown and old for their years, and much 
wound about and entangled with bittersweet. 
Here we reach a narrow break, through which 
the highway winds, and beyond there stands 
a noble grove of old oaks and hemlocks, which 
is a joy forever. 

From the bottom of the ledge, which does 
not here rise more than about four hundred 
feet above the sea, the ground slopes rapidly 
to the valley, which, between this point and 
the foot of the western hills, is two or three 
miles in width, pretty nearly level, and liable 
to frequent overflow, on which occasions we 
have a pleasant variety of lake scenery. The 
general trend of the valley is from north to 
south, and with little doubt our river at one 
time ran through it to the Sound, in similar 
fashion to most of the other rivers in the State. 
By some cause, probably the gradual though 
very moderate elevation of the ground to the 
south of us, its course was turned at this point, 
after it had fought its way hither from the 



TUNXIS 

northwest; and forming a horseshoe, and 
flowing to the northward for about ten miles, 
it found or made a gap through the hills and 
so passed out southeastwardly into t'he Con- 
necticut at Windsor. 

The bed of the river here is only about one 
hundred and fifty feet above the level of the 
sea. The river is perhaps a hundred and fifty 
feet in width, but so closely bordered by trees 
that the surface of the water rarely shows 
from a distance, excepting here and there when 
the trees are bare. The hills beyond the val- 
ley rise in steep rounded slopes, and can be 
seen, tier beyond tier, for many miles, espe- 
cially in the north-northwest, the most distant 
points visible in that direction being perhaps 
fourteen hundred feet in height, but the hori- 
zon line is not far from a horizontal one — 
which certainly befits such a line. 

The hill which is capped by the ledge is 
known in the old records as the " First Moun- 
tain." It breaks away towards the eastward, 
not far from the cottage, in the direction of a 
copious fountain known as " Paul Spring," 
which from time to time becomes the center of 
a tradition that it is unfailing, until an un- 
usually dry season breaks in upon it and 
damages its reputation for the time being. 
Here begins the " Second Mountain," or 
North Mountain, or Talcott Mountain, 
which by various leaps and bounds climbs 



TUNXIS 

away to the northward, a noble mass, with 
some fine cliffs and grand headlands, upon 
which the lingering afternoon sunlight de- 
lights to practice all its finest tinting. This 
range in its greatest height does not exceed 
about nine hundred feet, but is so near us, 
and the western face is in some parts so steep, 
that the effect is of a much more considerable 
height. 

Back of the ledge, to the southwest, is an 
artificial pond of moderate size, and much 
beauty, used as a reservoir, and beyond that is 
a steep summit known as " Rattlesnake Moun- 
tain," crowned with huge masses of rock tossed 
about in wild confusion. It is said that the 
crotalus still makes himself at home upon this 
mountain. As to this I cannot say, but I can 
safely certify as to the copperhead. 

The slope upon this side of the valley is 
covered with a soil made largely from a dis- 
integrated sandstone, and some of it is very 
productive when kindly treated. The bed of 
the valley itself is alluvial, and in some places 
quite rich, though the soil is rather " sour." 
Here and there are great hills of drift, mostly 
gravel, some of which are popularly supposed 
to have been constructed by the Indians, but 
all are doubtless chargeable to glacial agency. 
The valley (which stretches far to the north- 
ward, to be bounded at last, some thirty miles 
away, by a group of mountains in the old Bay 



TUNXIS 

State) is, as are the hills, much covered with 
timber, mostly of moderate size. The largest 
and most impressive trees, excepting a few 
great elms, are the buttonwoods, which in the 
low grounds have sometimes attained impos- 
ing dimensions. The cultivated and the 
cleared land is in larger proportion, however, 
than appears from any elevated point, since, in 
perspective, a small piece of woodland natu- 
rally conceals a considerable space of bare 
ground. 

The village lies near the foot of the 
western slope of the First Mountain, the 
" Main " Street, which has a few angles, but 
the general course of which corresponds nearly 
with that of the valley, being built upon at 
more or less close intervals on both sides, for 
something over a mile. There are also a 
" High " Street, and a " River " Street, upon 
each of which there are some houses, and 
there are a few cross-streets, upon which, how- 
ever, with two exceptions, there are few build- 
ings. 

The aspect of the village is that of one 
which was not made, but grew. Most of the 
houses are nowhere in particular, and uni- 
formity " isn't in it." The elm is our most 
characteristic tree, but the maples are nearly 
or quite as numerous as the elms, and lest 
these two should gain the impression that they 
are the only trees of importance, others in 



TUNXIS 

considerable variety are to be found, breaking 
in upon any attempt at monotony. 

White speaks of the Norton farmhouse, as 
being to the northwestward of the village of 
Selborne. The Norton farmhouse we have 
also, but it is to the northeastward of our 
village. By the way, White tells of a " broad 
leaved elm, or wych hazel," which stood in the 
court of the Norton farmhouse, the trunk of 
which was eight feet in diameter. This sug- 
gests the caution with which we are compelled 
to handle popular names, the term wych hazel 
being confined, with us, to the extremely 
crabbed and angular shrub, the Hamamelis 
Virginiana, which brings its golden blossoms 
to brighten the dying year. 

But what have we here after all that I have 
written? Merely the bones, the skeleton as 
it were — living it may be, but waiting to be 
clothed with leaf and flower and fruit, with 
lichen and moss and bracken, waiting to palpi- 
tate under the sunlight, and to lie pale and 
wan under the waning moon: waiting for the 
dash of the warm summer rain: waiting to be 
breathed upon, and to respond to the touch 
of the life-giving winds. This is our Tunxis, 
the village of our hearts' desire. 



II 

AS IT WAS IN THE BE- 
GINNING 

WHY did the good people who wan- 
dered from Wethersfleld and 
Hartford thus far into the wilder- 
ness in 1640, or their superiors in 
the General Court, think it necessary five years 
later to give the town the name of Farming- 
ton? It is a brave name, it is true, and de- 
scriptive, for this was a settlement of farmers ; 
but it is imported and commonplace, and stands 
in the stead of one even more descriptive, and 
quite distinctive, and withal aboriginal. They 
were, these stanch pioneers, not averse to 
homely and descriptive names in the language 
with which they were most familiar, as wit- 
ness " The Great Swamp," and " Lovely- 
tcwn," and the " Barn-door Hills," and 
"Bird's Hill," and "Gin-still Hill," and 
"Whortleberry Hill," and "Satan's King- 
dom," and " Pine Meadow," and the like. 
Perhaps they felt a certain shrinking from 
terms which smacked too strongly of their 
neighbors upon the river bank, however 
amicably they consorted with them for the 

8 



AS IN THE BEGINNING 

most part, and thought, moreover, that it was 
not fitting that self-respecting Christians 
should take to themselves a name by which the 
people of Suncquasson designated their primi- 
tive village. 

Yet some of us even now look back re- 
gretfully upon the old name, and would 
gladly again accept it, or the more important 
portion of it, even after the memories of two 
hundred and fifty years have incrusted that to 
which we are at present most accustomed. 
Perhaps, then, we should get our letters 
directly, instead of having them sent first to 
Torrington. At all events, we should live in 
neither a " ton " nor a " ville," and that 
would be something; and we try to keep the 
name alive by using it as occasion offers. And 
we keep fast hold of the name of the Pequa- 
buck, the littler river which glides into the 
" little " river, the Tunxis, at its bend, by 
which stream the Indians dropped down in 
their canoes to catch salmon in the larger one 
in those golden days when salmon freely fre- 
quented these waters, ere yet mills poured 
their dyestuffs into them, and towns and vil- 
lages their offscourings of all sorts. 

With what singular rapidity the early set- 
tlers spread over this eastern country! It 
seems almost as if they were operated upon by 
some repulsive force acting among their 
atoms; for no sooner had they fairly deter- 



AS IN THE BEGINNING 

mined upon a spot upon which to place their 
hive, than out went a swarm to find and ap- 
propriate another nesting place. It was but 
in 1620, in the wild December weather, that 
the Pilgrims groped their way into Plymouth 
harbor; in 1628 that Salem was invaded by 
the Puritans under Endicott. But already in 
three years after the latter date a garland of 
settlements surrounded Tri-mountain ; Salem 
and Newe-Towne and Watertown and 
Charlestowne and Rocksbury and Dorchester 
and a number of others. In 1633, at the in- 
stigation of Governor Winslow of Plymouth, 
William Holmes had set up his trading-post 
at the point where the Tunxis empties into the 
Connecticut — at Matianuck, the beginning of 
the new Dorchester, now Windsor; albeit it 
did not become Dorchester until the Puritans 
of Massachusetts Bay had elbowed the Pil- 
grims out of it. The next year at the Indian 
village of Pyquag began the settlement of 
Watertown, soon to become Wethersfield and 
a year later Suckiaug became Newe-Towne, 
and so remained until Hartford superseded it. 
In 1634 tnat courtly gentleman, John Win- 
throp the younger, representing Lord Say and 
Sele, Lord Brooke, John Hampden, John 
Pym, Sir Richard Saltonstall and their as- 
sociates, had planted himself at Saybrook, and 
in 1636 William Pyncheon, following, or 
making, the Bay path to the bank of the Con- 

10 



AS IN THE BEGINNING 

necticut River, had formed a settlement, 
which was to be restricted to forty families, at 
Agawam, which is Springfield. 

The Bay settlements proper began in 1628, 
and already in 1636 Roger Williams had 
been compelled to move on to Sekonk and 
Providence. In 1637 Theophilus Eaton came 
to Quinnipiac to spy out the land, and the 
following year, with Davenport and the rest 
of their company, drove the stakes upon which 
were to be established the hard lines which 
should hold sound in the faith and in morals 
the worthy inhabitants of New-Haven but 
which, alas! should prove so ineffective with 
the unworthy ones. 

Then came, in 1639, the settlement of 
Wepowaug, alias Milford, and of Menun- 
katuck, alias Guilford, and of Unquowa, alias 
Fairfield, and Cupheag, alias Stratford, and 
so on and so on. 

The first suggestion toward a settlement in 
Connecticut seems to be referred to in the 
following extract from John Winthrop's jour- 
nal, April 4, 1 63 1 : 

" Wahginnacut, a sachem of the River 
Quonehtacut, which lies west of Naragancet, 
came to the Governour at Boston, with John 
Sagamore and Jack Straw, (an Indian who 
had lived in England and had served Sir Wal- 
ter Raleigh and was now turned Indian 
again,) and divers of their Sannops, and 

11 



AS IN THE BEGINNING 

brought a letter to the Governour from 
Mr. Endecott to this effect: That the said 
Wahginnacut was very desirous to have some 
Englishmen to come plant in his country, and 
offered to find them corn, and give them 
yearly eighty skins of beaver, and that the 
country was very fruitful, &c., and wished 
that there might be two men sent with him to 
see the country. The Governour entertained 
them at dinner, but would send none with 
him." 

This was in 1631. We have seen how soon 
the situation was changed, and how rapidly 
the lines ran out southward and westward. 
Thus, within twenty years from that bleak 
December day when 

" The breaking waves dashed high 

On a stern and rock-bound coast, 
And the woods against a stormy sky 
Their giant branches tossed," 

there had grown up a fringe of settlements 
from the Penobscot to Manhattan Island, and 
some others only to be reached by long jour- 
neys upon inland waters, or by the paths made 
by the Indians through the forests and over 
the mountains. Perhaps it was with them as 
it was with Daniel Boone — that their fore- 
most desire was for elbow-room. 

If so, they certainly found it, but they paid 
dearly for it. They were not all people of 

12 



AS IN THE BEGINNING 

cultivation and refinement, but a good propor- 
tion — I may even say a large proportion — of 
them appear to have been such, and to have 
been accustomed to such comforts as were 
attainable by families of first-rate standing and 
position in the old country. Realizing this, 
we can form some idea of the trials through 
which they passed in those early years. 

Think, for example, of that first winter in 
Newe-Towne, the recent Suckiaug, in 1635- 
36, when the Charter Oak was young. The 
largest party for the year did not leave the 
" Bay " until mid-October, and their journey 
was long. They reached their destination 
wholly unprepared for winter, and that year 
the river was quite frozen over by the middle 
of November. Shelter was insufficient, and 
provisions became very scarce. Their sup- 
plies, which had been sent by sea, failed to 
reach them. Many, disheartened, made their 
way down to the mouth of the river, where 
they found a small vessel fast in the ice; this 
they were able to extricate, and in it, after a 
rough and dangerous voyage, they succeeded 
in returning to Boston, whither others strug- 
gled through the snow-encumbered forest. 
Those who remained had a sorry time of it; 
but they endured. A terrible pestilence of 
smallpox had just swept through the Indian 
villages, but the whites did not suffer from it. 

A different experience attended the larger 

13 



AS IN THE BEGINNING 

party which, under the lead of the Rev. 
Thomas Hooker, moved the Newe-Towne 
(Cambridge) Church — the society, not the 
building — to the newer Newe-Towne in the 
following year, when a party of a hundred 
men, women, and children, with Mrs. Hooker 
carried in a litter, and with their flocks and 
their herds, journeying like the Israelites of 
old, took their way through the fresh June 
woods, and after two weeks' travel reached 
their new home in the very glory of the early 
summer. 

Thomas Hooker was easily the command- 
ing spirit of the movement and of the new 
colony of the Connecticut, consisting of the 
three settlements of Windsor, Hartford, and 
Wethersfield. Whatever other reasons may 
have existed for this migration, it is clear that 
the oligarchical spirit of the Bay Settlements 
was utterly foreign and intolerable to him. 
To him probably more than to any other 
single individual is to be traced the form of 
democratic government adopted in the United 
States. He was evidently of a mind with Sir 
Richard Saltonstall, who, after his return to 
England from the first Watertown in 1631, 
wrote to the ministers of Boston: "It doth 
not a little grieve my spirit to hear what sadd 
things are reported of your tyranny and 
persecutions in New-England, and that you 
fyne, whip, and imprison men for their con- 

14 



AS IN THE BEGINNING 

sciences. . . . These rigid ways have laid you 
very low in the hearts of the saynts. We 
pray for you and wish you prosperitie every 
way, and not to practice these courses in the 
wilderness which you went so far to prevent. 
I hope you do not assume to yourselves in- 
fallibilitie of judgment, when the most learned 
of the apostles confessed he knew but in part 
and saw but darkly as through a glass." 

In a sermon preached in 1638, the year 
before the adoption of the first Connecticut 
Constitution, Mr. Hooker laid down three 
leading doctrines, upon which that Constitu- 
tion was subsequently based : 

" I. That the choice of public magistrates 
belongs unto the people, by God's own al- 
lowance. 

" II. The privilege of election, which be- 
longs to the people, therefore must not be 
exercised according to their humours, but ac- 
cording to the blessed will and law of God. 

" III. They who have power to appoint 
officers and magistrates, it is in their power 
also to set the bounds and limitations of the 
power and place unto which they call them." 

While the form of government established 
and the government conducted by the Con- 
necticut colony upon these principles were in 
lively contrast with those established by the 
Puritans in Boston and in New-Haven, there 
was no lack of deference and respect to those 

15 



AS IN THE BEGINNING 

who were respectable, and quite naturally and 
properly the minister of the dominant church 
was an influential and usually, perhaps, the 
most influential figure. It was probably for- 
tunate, therefore, that the church at the new 
settlement upon the Tunxis should have been 
presided over for many years, first by the son- 
in-law, and then by the son, of Thomas 
Hooker. 

At the beginning the settlers were few, and 
in 1645 the " grand list " of the town, that 
is, its assessment roll, footed up £10. Ten 
years later it amounted to £5519. Accord- 
ing to Egbert Cowles, in 1775 the footing of 
the grand list was £66,571, while that of 
Hartford was £28,120. This, however, is 
misleading, for the territory then embraced 
within the town of Farmington has since been 
divided into more than half a dozen towns. 
A good proportion of the names of the early 
settlers I find still represented in the town. 

In considering the hardships which the 
early colonists endured, we should remember 
that in 1640 the comforts of life, even in 
well-to-do circles in England, were not every- 
thing that might be asked. They did not 
have trolley cars running past their doors and 
running over their children if they didn't 
" watch out." They did not have gas burn- 
ing in houses for country cousins to blow out, 
or circulating boilers to blow up, or hot-air 

16 



AS IN THE BEGINNING 

furnaces to desiccate them. They did not 
have mails delivered every three hours, or 
Western Union Telegraph boys, with messages 
in their pockets, playing marbles upon the 
streets. There are several things which they 
did not have anywhere, even in the heart of 
London, which must be taken into the account 
in considering the question of relative com- 
fort. 

But by the side of the Tunxis the new- 
comers had fertile meadows, and between the 
hills they found good pasturage for their 
cattle. They shared the deer and other game 
in the woods, and the trout and the salmon 
and the shad in the river, with their copper- 
colored brethren. These were numerous, 
and they lived hardly more than a stone's- 
throw away; but they were friendly, and they 
stalked the village street with as much in- 
quisitiveness, and swallowed West India rum 
with as much copiousness and gusto, as any 
of the palefaces. 

And what an inheritance they left to us 
of the later time! Posted upon Rattlesnake 
Mountain, or even upon the lesser height of 
the First Mountain or of Sunset Rock, or at 
the point where the Pilgrim's Path reached 
the brow of the hill, the spot from which they 
probably viewed it first, one needs not to be 
instructed as to the attraction which the scene 
must have had for those who first looked down 

17 



AS IN THE BEGINNING 

upon it. In front lie broad meadow-lands, 
stretching far to the southward, through 
which the Pequabuck twists and turns, to lose 
itself at length in the Tunxis, which, coming 
through rocky gorges from the hills of Bark- 
hamsted in the northwest, emerges upon the 
plain and turns to the northward, where it 
meets its younger sister and then bathes the 
foot of the Talcott Mountain for fifteen or 
sixteen miles before it finds an opportunity to 
slip through and run southeastward to its 
union with the Connecticut. Within the 
horseshoe are other meadows, annually over- 
flowed more or less in the early spring, as are 
also those to the southward; and then come 
gentle hills and an undulating country which 
the eye follows up to the Massachusetts 
border, to be checked at last by the mountains 
of Montgomery. 

And though, with all our fondness for this 
valley and for these hills, we are unable — 
perhaps from custom — quite to realize the 
" almost Alpine grandeur " which a recent 
inspired critic found in our picturesque trap 
ledges and wooded slopes, we are glad to 
recognize in his rhapsody the proof of the 
inspiration which they afford, and to feel in 
consequence more than justified in our less 
spasmodic enjoyment of them. 



18 



Ill 



FARMINGTON (CONNEC- 
TICUT) EIGHTY YEARS 
AGO 

[Written in 1895] 

I HAVE among my kinsfolk one whose 
powers of memory are my constant envy, 
for she occasionally astonishes her friends 
by recalling with great vividness occur- 
rences of interest, of which the most marked 
characteristic perhaps is the fact (quite as 
singular to her, when discovered, as to others) 
that the events spoken of took place some forty 
or fifty years before she was born. So much 
for the value of a lively imagination and 
power of assimilation. Not being gifted in 
like manner, I have had to rely upon the recol- 
lections of others, and upon the material 
which I found accessible, some of it in print 
and some in manuscript, which I have un- 
hesitatingly laid under contribution whenever 
I could make it serviceable. I am especially 
indebted to Julius Gay, the admirable chron- 
icler of his native village. 

It is said that all roads lead to Rome, the 

19 



FARMINGTON 

center of the Christian world. By many, 
Boston has long been considered the center of 
the Universe. Farmington could not fairly 
be called upon to rival these two nuclei; 
nevertheless, much investigation has led me to 
the conclusion that it has been in its day a 
close third. Planted at the end of the Pil- 
grim's Path, traces of which may yet be dis- 
covered upon yonder hill, it later became an 
important station upon the highway between 
the cities of New York and Boston, with 
thoroughfares leading northwestward to 
Pittsfield and Albany, and southward to New 
Haven. It seems to have been always a 
center from which formative influences 
streamed out over the length and breadth of 
the land. If it be true that such centers are 
strown broadcast all over the country, we cart 
only say, by way of paraphrase, blessed is the 
land whose center is everywhere, whose cir- 
cumference is nowhere. 

There are very serious difficulties connected 
with the effort to give a picture of circum- 
stances and customs at any specific time long 
past. If there be survivors, their memories of 
the conditions at various dates inevitably run 
together and become confused: books regard- 
ing former times are apt to be unreliable for 
the same reason, or because their authors fail 
to indicate dates in stating peculiarities of 
dress, manner, habit, or condition; and con- 

20 



FARMINGTON 

temporary records usually omit precisely the 
items upon which one desires information. 
One must be very careful in handling authori- 
ties, especially printed authorities, which pur- 
port to be of the latter class. A notable 
instance attracted my attention while looking 
up the facts which I am about to record. A 
magazine article came before me, which pur- 
ported to give extracts from a journal kept in 
this village by a young girl during the Revolu- 
tionary War — a valuable document, could it 
have been depended upon. Unfortunately, 
as I read it over, its whole tone rang false, as 
something quite impossible under the circum- 
stances. When I came to apply a more care- 
ful test I discovered under date of December, 
1776, specific record of events which did not 
actually occur until months later. The young 
woman to whom this happened was comple- 
mentary, as it were, to my kinswoman. Her 
memory might be called the anticipatory, and 
the other the retroactive. 

In thinking of Farmington as it was eighty 
years ago we are called upon to view a situa- 
tion differing from the present in an unusual 
way. Instead of a quiet, budding village, we 
must realize a bustling and busy center of 
manufacture and trade. Goods were im- 
ported direct from foreign parts — even from 
the antipodes — in vessels owned in this place; 
and there are to-day to be found here - in 

21 



FARMINGTON 

various houses sets of real china, made upon 
the other side of the globe to order, and having 
upon them the names of those who ordered 
them, which were brought over in these ves- 
sels. This is the more singular, since our 
rivers were never navigable for any vessel very 
much more serious than a canoe, but little 
matters of this kind did not trouble our ances- 
tors: if they wanted an inland seaport, they 
would have it. An interesting example of 
their indifference to ordinary considerations 
came to my notice two or three years ago in 
the northwestern part of this State. In the 
course of my wanderings I came across the 
ruins of an old mill and machinery at the out- 
let of a pond on the top of Mount Riga, some 
eighteen hundred or two thousand feet above 
the level of the sea. Upon inquiring into the 
history of the place I discovered that the pond 
was known as Forge Pond, and that formerly, 
in the active days of the iron industry, iron in 
ore or in pigs (let us hope at least that it was 
the latter) was hauled up the mountain in 
wagons from Oreville, some miles distant, to 
be worked in this old mill, the finished 
material being subsequently carried down for 
distribution. To most persons now it would 
seem more expedient to catch and use the 
water power at the foot of the mountain, 
rather than at its summit. 

But to return to Farmington. Goods of 

22 



FARMINGTON 

various kinds were here manufactured in 
numerous buildings, — checked and striped 
linens, leather, hats, potash, muskets, tinware, 
and various other articles, — and were dis- 
tributed from this point throughout the 
country. I will not pretend to try to explain 
the relation between the facts that at the time 
these manufactures became profitable the 
country was under a low tariff, and that im- 
mediately after the war of 1 8 12- 15 which cut 
off foreign importations, and under the higher 
tariff which followed it, this whole structure 
went to pieces. This is as inscrutable as the 
fact that under the disastrous Wilson tariff, 
the number of persons employed in the manu- 
factories of Connecticut increased by thirteen 
or fourteen per cent., instead of going exactly 
the other way, as everybody knows that it 
should. These are but samples, however, of 
the fashion in which facts will fly in the face 
of well-known philosophical principles, to the 
great and increasing perplexity of worthy 
people who have arranged all these things in 
advance precisely as they should be. Facts 
are like mosquitoes: they don't amount to 
much, but sometimes they are very annoying. 

There are a number of buildings of the 
eighteenth century now standing; but of these 
doubtless many may have been transplanted 
from their original positions, though so long 
ago that it seems to-day as if they had taken 

23 



FARMINGTON 

root in the places where we find them. This 
is notably the case with a number of gambrel- 
roofed houses upon the side streets, which are 
now occupied as dwellings, but which were 
formerly stores or parts of stores upon Main 
Street. Buildings, not a few, have disap- 
peared and left no trace. If we may trust a 
map or plan drawn many years ago by the 
Rev. William S. Porter, one such stood upon 
the front of my mountain meadow, but of this 
not a sign remains unless I may consider as 
such an apple tree and a cherry tree, both of 
humble quality, along the roadside. The 
ordinary monument, the purple lilac, is 
wholly missing. This locomotive tendency 
upon the part of buildings is, I suppose, a 
Yankee peculiarity, and in keeping with the 
restless habit of the inhabitants. It is an un- 
ending wonder to me that the majority of our 
people are always wishing to be somewhere 
else. I am sure that I should be quite willing 
to remain within the grounds at Underledge 
for the remainder of my days, provided always 
that such a condition were not made com- 
pulsory. But I am very doubtful whether I 
ever met another who could say so much of 
any place. With the majority, perpetual 
motion seems to be the essential condition of 
continued life. 

A number of the more important buildings 
now standing were erected within the first 

24 



FARMINGTON 

twenty years of this century, the period of 
the greatest financial prosperity of the village. 
Of the older buildings which remain, and of 
which the date of erection is approximately 
known, the most ancient is the Whitman 
house on High Street, directly in front of 
Underledge. This is the only one now stand- 
ing of three supposed to have been erected 
about the year 1700. The second and third 
both stood upon the same side of the same 
street until modern times, one of them having 
been torn down in 1880 to make room for a 
barn which could better have been spared; 
the other, after removal to the rear of the lot 
upon which it formerly stood, in which new 
location it became, I am told, a disgrace in its 
old age, was burned in 1886. 

Others of the eighteenth century (begin- 
ning by the approach on the Hartford road) 
include a house on the corner of North Main 
Street, now occupied as a tin shop, and 
another adjoining, a quaint little dark gam- 
brel-roofed structure wherein the Tunxis 
Library was started a number of years ago. 
I would that I could have seen it in those 
days, for though the present library room in 
the village hall is commodious and attractive, 
it certainly lacks the special charm which, I 
am told, always characterized its former abode. 
A short distance below, on the other side of 
the street, is a pleasant-looking cottage, the 

25 



FARMINGTON 

lowness of which gives an additional accent to 
the great size of the patriarchal elm which 
overshadows it. Nearly opposite is the Elm 
Tree Inn, a well-known and comfortable 
hostelry of various dates of construction, the 
original portion (probably the brick part of 
the front and a hospitable room behind it, 
with a great fireplace in which hangs the old 
crane) being very old. 

Opposite the north end of the Main Street 
is a large mansion, built about a hundred and 
thirty years ago by Colonel Fisher Gay, who 
led the farmers of Farmington to the Revolu- 
tionary War, wherein he performed good but 
brief service, for he gave up his life early. 
This building has recently been moved back 
from the road and largely reconstructed with 
exceedingly good taste, and the numerous un- 
sightly barns which had been crowded about 
it having been removed, it now commands the 
attention which it deserves, and at the same 
time permits of a good view to the northward 
on the part of those coming up the street. 

Upon Main Street itself, probably at least 
one-third of the buildings now standing, and 
perhaps a larger proportion, belong to the 
eighteenth century. Some of these have been 
considerably altered, and others probably re- 
main very much as when erected. One of 
these, a fine old mansion, is said to have been 
designed by an officer of Burgoyne's army, 

26 



FARMINGTON 

then sojourning here as a prisoner of war. 
Another, built for a tavern immediately after 
the Revolution by one of the Wadsworth 
family, and still belonging to a member of 
that family, was formerly the scene of many 
merrymakings, and it was at one time under 
contemplation to hold the sessions of the 
Legislature in it, the Hartford innkeepers 
having failed to satisfy the members of that 
body. 

The house of Colonel Noadiah Hooker, a 
descendant of the Rev. Thomas Hooker, the 
first minister of the church at Hartford, and 
grandfather of John Hooker, now of that 
city, and great-grandfather of " Professor " 
William Gillette, stood on the New Britain 
road about a hundred and fifty yards from 
the Main Street, on or near the spot now 
occupied by a small schoolhouse, which was 
the original home of the well-known Farming- 
ton Seminary for Young Ladies. Edward, the 
son of Noadiah, used the old dwelling house 
as a schoolhouse and dormitory, and it was 
known then and afterward as the " old red 
college." His son Edward writes (I quote 
from Julius Gay) that the " kitchen was 
floored with smooth flat mountain stones, and 
had a big door at the eastern end, and my 
father used to say that when his father was a 
boy, they used to drive a yoke of oxen with a 
sled load of wood into one door and up to the 

27 



FARMINGTON 

fireplace, then unload the wood upon the fire, 
and drive the team out of the other door." 

In looking over some old family records 
while preparing this account, I was interested 
to find it stated regarding a strong stone house 
erected in Pennsylvania in 1752 or 1753, by 
my great grandfather, and still standing and 
occupied by " The Hill School," " There was 
formerly a large doorway in the back part of 
the house, into which it was customary to 
drive a cart loaded with wood to supply the 
kitchen fire." 

The erection of the present church building 
was begun in 1771, nearly one hundred 
and twenty-five years ago, and I have been 
told that most of the shingles upon its beauti- 
ful spire are those originally placed upon it 
at the time of its completion in the following 
year. It was fitted with high square pews, of 
which those in the gallery were removed in 
the winter of 1825, and those in the body of 
the house in 1836. The paneling of these 
was scattered, a portion of it being worked 
into the horsesheds in the rear of the church, 
where it can still be descried. The pulpit 
seems to have been a formidable affair with a 
window behind it, an extinguisher over it, and 
a mysterious door beneath. At an anniversary- 
celebration a good many years ago, John 
Hooker spoke of the great curtains behind the 
pulpit, and of the huge sounding board. Pro- 

28 



FARMINGTON 

fessor Denison Olmsted asked what had be- 
come of the old square pews, the old pulpit 
with all its gorgeous decorations, the carved 
work that adorned the pilasters at either side 
of the pulpit windows, with flowers painted of 
copper green. The pulpit, I believe, was 
made so high and formidable looking, in part, 
in order that the minister might be within 
easy range of the galleries. John Hooker tells 
a story — at least ben trovato, if not vero — of 
the loud preaching from a similar box-like 
pulpit, which led a little girl who had been 
taken to church for the first time, to ask her 
mother on the way home, " Why they didn't 
let that man out, when he was trying so hard 
to get out, and hollering so." President Por- 
ter spoke of the sounding board as " a won- 
drous canopy of wood with a roof like the 
dome of a Turkish mosque " ; Hon. Francis 
Gillette described it as a pear-shaped canopy, 
with a stem hardly visible. " As nearly as I 
can recollect," said he, " the conclusion to 
which I came concerning the design or use of 
the wooden avalanche, was, that it was an in- 
vention, not to help the preacher's voice, which 
needed no help, but to hang over him in ter- 
rorem, after the manner of the sword of 
Damocles, to fall and crush him should he 
preach any false doctrine." 

Of the other peculiarity of the pulpit, Presi- 
dent Porter says " there opened a door beneath 

29 



FARMINGTON 

the pulpit into a closet, of which it was fabled 
that it was reserved by the tything man for 
boys especially unruly in behavior." 

That such a myth should have grown up 
is not to be wondered at. With what seems 
to us at this day a fatuity almost inconceiv- 
able, the boys at that period were not per- 
mitted to sit with their elders, but were 
herded together in the galleries, the effect of 
which arrangement was just about as bad as it 
could be. It was to correct this state of 
things that the square pews were removed 
from the galleries in 1825. 

The pulpit subsequently disappeared, but 
there is a tradition that it did duty during its 
latter days as a chicken coop. What became 
of the crown which formerly graced the sum- 
mit of the spire appears to be wholly unknown. 
Were this found, it would be a treasure in- 
deed. 

A singular arrangement existed in the man- 
agement of the church, as of others at that 
time, of which it is worth while to make men- 
tion. It was the custom from time to time to 
appoint a " Seating Committee." The func- 
tion of this committee was to indicate the 
social and religious position of the members 
of the church, and seat them accordingly. 
"In 1783," says President Porter, "a large 
committee was appointed to dignify the Meet- 
ing-house, that is, to designate and arrange 

30 



FARMINGTON 

the seats according to their relation of dignity, 
and to report. Their report was received at 
a subsequent meeting, and a Seating Com- 
mittee was immediately appointed." The last? 
seating took place in 1842. Can you imagine 
the heartburnings which must sometimes have 
arisen from the decisions of such a committee, 
settling definitely and without effective appeal 
the rank of the members and thus their so- 
cial standing, outside as well as within the 
church, as compared with that of their fel- 
lows? 

It was cold comfort that the good people 
had within the sanctuary at certain seasons of 
the year. There was no stove to heat the 
church until 1824, and such alleviation as was 
to be had was obtained from foot stoves which 
the worshipers carried with them. The 
struggle over the introduction of stoves into 
the churches was one which did not meet with 
immediate success. I have not read, I think, 
a detailed account of the proceedings here, but 
some circumstances connected with the change 
in the neighboring town of Litchfield are not 
without interest. This change took place 
during the time of the Rev. Lyman Beecher. 
Deacon Trowbridge had been induced to give 
up his opposition, but shook his head " as he 
felt the heat reflected from it, and gathered 
up the skirts of his greatcoat as he passed " it. 
The chronicler adds : " But when the editor 

31 



FARMINGTON 

of the village paper, Mr. Bunce, came in 
— who was a believer in stoves in churches — 
and with a most satisfactory air warmed his 
hands at the stove, keeping the skirts of his 
greatcoat carefully between his knees, we 
could stand it no longer, but dropped invisible 
behind the breastwork. . . . But the climax 
of the whole was when Mrs. Peck went 
out in the middle of the service." It is said 
that she became ill and fainted from the heat. 
The fact is that, the day being warm, there 
was no fire in the stove. 

Eccelesiastical privileges were provided 
generously in those days: those who came in 
the morning from long distances, as many did, 
had no time to return to their homes, but were 
accommodated between services in Sabbath or 
Saba-day houses, erected upon the green about 
the church. The music of the church was 
undergoing a change — in fact, in this and 
other churches it had been undergoing a 
change for sixty or eighty years, if indeed the 
period of change does not still continue, which, 
from remarks that I occasionally hear, I am 
led to suspect is the case. When the custom 
of " lining out " the hymns was given up, I do 
not know. But other customs which were in- 
troduced from time to time in the course of 
musical evolution had an effect even more 
singular than the lining out. Mrs. Earle 
tells of the ridiculous result produced by the 

32 



FARMINGTON 

repetition of words in Billings' fugues, which 
were at one time in use. " Thus the words 

" * With reverence let the Saints appear 
And bow before the Lord,' 

were forced to be sung ' And bow-wow-wow, 
And bow-wow-wow,' and so on until bass, 
treble, alto, counter, and tenor had l bow- 
wowed ' for about twenty seconds ; yet," she 
adds, " I doubt if the simple hearts that sang 
ever saw the absurdity." This case will 
doubtless remind you of Handel's magnificent 
oratorio of the Messiah, with its perfectly 
credible statement of fact frequently reit- 
erated, with a positiveness which seems un- 
necessary, " All we like sheep." 

It is rather strange that anything so har- 
monious as music should awaken contentions 
and animosities, but such seem to have been 
almost constantly arising in the churches, and 
at times attained an incomprehensible bitter- 
ness. 

The singing at about 1720 appears to have 
been both leisurely and cacophonous. Rev. 
Thomas Walter says, " I myself have twice in 
one note paused to take breath. ... I have 
observed in many places, one man is upon this 
note, while another is a note before him, 
which produces something so hideous and dis- 
orderly as is beyond expression bad. . . . No 
two men in the congregation quaver alike, or 

33 



FARMINGTON 

together; which sounds in the ears of a good 
judge, like five hundred different tunes roared 
out at the same time, whose perpetual inter- 
ferings with one another, perplexed jars and 
unmeasured periods, would make a man won- 
der at the false pleasure which they conceive 
in that which good judges of music and sounds 
cannot bear to hear." 

The following petition will indicate the 
nature of the controversy, as it affected our 
village at about this time: 

" To the Honourable ye General Assembly 
at hartford ye 18th of May 1725. the me- 
morial of Joseph Hawley one of ye house of 
Representatives humbly sheweth your Memo- 
rialist his father and Grandfather and ye 
whole Church & people of farmingtown have 
used to worship God by singing psalms to his 
praise In yt mode called ye Old way. how- 
ever t'other Day Jonathan Smith & one 
Stanly Got a book & pretended to sing more 
regularly & so made Great disturbance In ye 
worship of God for ye people could not follow 
ye mode of singing, at Length t'was moved 
to ye church whither to admit ye new way or 
no, who agreed to suspend it at least for a 
year, yet Deacon hart ye Chorister one Sab- 
bath day In setting ye psalm attempted to sing 
Bella tune — and yor memorialist being used 
to ye old way as aforesd did not know bellum 
tune from pax tune, and supposed ye deacon 

34 



FARMINGTON 

had aimed at Cambridge short tune, and set 
it wrong, whereupon yr petitioner Raised his 
Voice in ye sd short tune & ye people followed 
him, except ye sd Smith & Stanly, & ye few 
who Sang allowed In bella tune; & so there 
was an unhappy Discord in ye singing, as 
there has often bin since ye new Singers set 
up, and ye Blame was all Imputed to yor poor 
petition [er], and Jno Hooker, Esqr., assist- 
ant, sent for him, & fined him ye 19th of 
Febry Last for breach of Sabbath, and so yor 
poor petitionr is layed under a very heavie 
Scandal & Reproach & Rendered vile & pro- 
phane for what he did in ye fear of God & in 
ye mode he had bin well educated in and was 
then ye setled manner of Singing by ye 
agreemt of ye Church. 

" Now yor Petitionr thinks ye Judgement is 
erroneous, first, ye fact if as wicked as mr. 
hooker supposed Comes under ye head of dis- 
turbing God's worship, and not ye statute of 
prophaning ye Sabbath: Secondly, because no 
member of a Lawfull Church Society can be 
punished for worshiping God In ye modes & 
forms, agreed upon, & fixed by ye Society: 
thirdly because tis errors, when ye Civill 
authority sodenly Interpose between partyes 
yt differ about modes of worship, & force one 
party to Submitt to ye other, till all milder 
methods have bin used to Convince mens' 
Consciences: fourthly because tis error to 

35 



FARMINGTON 

make a Gent of yor Petitionr Carracter a 
Scandalous offender upon Record, for nothing 
but a present mistake at most, when no 
morral evil is intended. 

" Wherefore yor poor petitioner prayes you 
to set aside ye sd Jud, or by what means your 
honrs please, to save yor poor petitionr from 
ye Imputation of ye heinous Crime Laid to 
him, & yor poor petitionr as In duty &c. shall 
ever pray. 

" Joseph Hawley." 

Billings reformed all that, and this is what 
he thought as to the success of his f ugal music : 
" It has more than twenty times the power of 
the old slow tunes; each part straining for 
mastery and victory, the audience entertained 
and delighted, their minds surpassingly 
agitated and extremely fluctuated, sometimes 
declaring for one part, and sometimes another. 
Now the solemn bass demands their attention, 
— next the manly tenor; now, the lofty coun- 
ter, — now the volatile treble. Now here — 
now there — now here again. O, ecstatic! 
Rush on, ye sons of harmony! " 

But it was the reformation of Billings 
which was going on eighty years ago. 

A change which took place in the church 
music upon the formation of the Handel 
Society in 1818, under the leadership of the 
unorthodox but universally beloved Dr. 

36 



FARMINGTON 

Todd, who led the choir by his violin, must 
have been most satisfactory. At about the 
same time the 'cello, the flute, the clarionet, 
and the bassoon were introduced. 

The church building, furnishing as it did 
the only large room in the village, was used 
for a great variety of purposes. Elections 
were held there, and public meetings of all 
sorts. The various exercises connected with 
the village academy were conducted in the 
church, and the academy was not parsimoni- 
ous as to time allowance. Edward Hooker 
writes in his journal (the MS. of which Mr. 
John Hooker has kindly placed at my dis- 
posal), under date of Friday, February 24, 
1826: "Evening. Attended an exhibition of 
dramatic pieces, declamations, etc., performed 
by the scholars of Mr. Hart's Academy at 
the Meeting-House. A great concourse of 
people attended. The exercises began about 
five & continued till half past eleven." A 
special dispensation must have been obtained 
upon this occasion, or the rules must have been 
somewhat relaxed since the earlier days of the 
century, when, as Mr. Gay reports, " Gov- 
ernor Treadwell fined the society ladies of his 
day because, as the indictment read, ' They 
were convened in company with others at the 
house of Nehemiah Street, and refused to dis- 
perse until after nine o'clock at night.' " 

Governor Treadwell was not an enthusiast 

37 



FARMINGTON 

in favor of the school exhibitions. They were 
given up about 1800 as calculated, he says, 
" like hot-beds to force a premature growth 
for ignorance and folly to stare at." They 
were resumed in 1823, and President Porter 
says, " Dramas were more than once enacted 
in this old puritan edifice with drop curtains 
and greenroom." He does not add that in 
1826, probably on the occasion referred to by 
Edward Hooker, a then future President of 
Yale College, bearing the name of Porter, 
acted the^part of a Frenchman in a play called 
" The Will, or the power of Medicine," and 
that in the following year " Elijah L. Lewis 
[still living at the north end of the village] 
has the part of Philip in the play ' The Cur- 
few,' in which N. Porter Jr. is a robber dis- 
guised as a Minstrel." 

In the Meeting-house yard, or upon the 
Green, were the Sabbath-day houses, and the 
Schoolhouse, and here also, even so late as 
eighty years ago, were the stocks in which 
offenders were occasionally placed to be stared 
and perhaps also jeered at. I fear that the 
whipping post and the pillory had not de- 
parted long before. To make amends for 
turbulent behavior at other times, it is said 
that "When the minister or a s.tranger entered 
the school-house, its busy inmates rose at once 
to their feet. As either approached the school- 
house by the wayside, the School children 

38 



FARMINGTON 

ceased from their sports and arranged them- 
selves in ranks to give a pleasant greeting to 
the passer by." 

The Meeting-house yard or green was a 
gathering place also when the weather did not 
forbid, and a place for athletic sports; and 
military companies marched and counter- 
marched there. " The consummation of the 
military glory of the village was reached when 
it could boast a Major General whose staff 
was largely made up from its wealthy young 
men. The distinguished white horse which 
the General rode contributed not a little to 
the glory of the General and his staff. How- 
ever sober and prosaic this horse might seem 
during most of the months of several of his 
last years, he never failed to grow young and 
gay as the autumnal reviews required his 
services." That the mixture might be com- 
plete, President Porter adds that punch and 
toddy were " brewed on the steps and at the 
door of the sanctuary," and freely distributed. 
Perhaps there is no subject upon which there 
is more misrepresentation to-day by those who 
are accounted good people, than that of the 
use and the abuse of intoxicating drinks. If 
you listen to an enthusiast upon this matter, 
you might be led to believe that the custom is 
constantly growing from bad to worse. 
Nothing could be more absolutely false. On 
the contrary, were you suddenly to be placed 

39 



FARMINGTON 

in this village upon a holiday as it was at the 
period of which I am speaking, you would feel 
as if you had been transferred to the realm of 
Bacchus and Silenus. Egbert Cowles speaks 
euphemistically of the imports being largely of 
the " products of the sugar house," meaning in 
a measure sugar and molasses, but more 
particularly rum. It seemed impossible at 
any time in the eighteenth century to erect a 
church without an adequate allowance of rum, 
and the custom took long in dying. Alice 
Morse Earle says, " In Northampton, in 1738, 
ten gallons of rum were bought for £8 ' to 
raise the Meeting house ' — and the village 
doctor got £3 for ' setting his bone Jonathan 
Strong,' and £3. 10s. for ' setting Ebenezer 
Burt's thy,' which somehow through the rum 
or the raising both gotten broken." " Rev. 
Nathan Strong, pastor of the first Church of 
Hartford, and author of the hymn ' Swell the 
Anthem, raise the song,' was engaged in the 
distilling business, and did not make a success 
of it either." 

In this village a ten-gallon keg, or a thirty- 
gallon cask of rum was not an unusual supply 
to sustain the labors of the harvest field. 
Liquors were kept in the stores as a matter of 
course, and they seem to have been freely 
served upon all occasions. The immediate 
consequences may readily be imagined, and the 
desolation which followed. 

40 



FARMINGTON 

As in all the experiences of life, a little 
humor crops out now and then to make things 
bearable. There was one Brownson, or 
Bronson, who had a mill at the south end of 
the town. Bronson was a dyer, a spinner, a 
weaver — in fact, he seems to have been an 
adept at all sorts of trades. But he occa- 
sionally partook of the products of the sugar 
house, and upon one of these occasions showed 
his dissent from the attitude of his wife by 
throwing her into the great dye-kettle, in con- 
sequence of which experience she was com- 
pelled to absent herself from public gaze for 
several months. Egbert Cowles says that a 
schoolgirl wrote, and induced one of the boys 
to post upon his door, this epitaph : 

l( Here lies one, and he was human, 
He lived a man, but dyed a woman." 

As you may suppose, there was thereafter war 
to the knife between the craftsman and his 
tormentors. 

It seems to have been customary both in 
Connecticut and in Massachusetts to have an 
installation ball to celebrate the induction of 
a new pastor. Such a ball was held in 
Wadsworth's tavern at the time of the instal- 
lation of Dr. Porter in 1806; the Doctor, 
however, I believe was not present. 

I have spent much time upon the church 
and its immediate environment, but this is 

4i 



FARMINGTON 

inevitable, for, formerly at least, the church 
was the center of the life of every Connecticut 
village. It was a God-fearing people that 
settled these towns, but if the truth must be 
told they appear sometimes to have feared God 
more than was actually necessary, and oc- 
casionally tried to " get square " with him 
when he was supposed not to be looking. 

Though not adjoining the church, as is 
usually or often the case, the old burying 
ground seems naturally to follow with its 
claim for attention. I will only transcribe 
one of the curious inscriptions which appear 
upon the stones, though many of them are well 
worthy of examination. The one to which I 
refer is the following, which is inscribed upon 
a stone erected in memory of a citizen of the 
town who was a Tory during the Revolu- 
tionary War: " In Memory of Mr. Ma- 
thias Learning, who hars got beyound the 
reach of Parcecushion. The life of man is 
vanity." 

Funerals, and they seem to have been star- 
tlingly numerous, especially during an epidemic 
of spotted fever in 1 808-9, were usually held 
on the day following the death. When so 
many had joined the majority as to demand 
extended space, the new ground was opened 
down near the river on the site of an old 
Indian village and burying ground. There 
were some of the Tunxis Indians still left at 

42 



FARMINGTON 

the time of which I speak, living not far from 
the site of the present railroad station. They 
had a burying ground some two hundred yards 
east of the station, where several commemora- 
tive stones are still to be seen. A memorial 
column was erected in the new ground to the 
departed race, for which one Lydia Huntley, 
reared in the Wadsworth family, and who 
often spent her time with the branch of that 
family in Farmington, wrote a few stanzas 
which have been inscribed thereon, beginning: 

" Chieftains of a banished race, 
In your ancient burial place 
By your fathers' ashes blest, 
Here in peace securely rest." 

I am compelled to say that her name would 
hardly be remembered to this day, if Lydia 
Huntley Sigourney had not done more 
worthily. 

Of the buildings erected during the early 
years of this century, several were of consider- 
able size, and marked the growing prosperity 
and social requirements of their owners. 
They are of various styles of architecture, or 
of no style, and marked a period of search 
after variety with more or less fortunate 
results, according to circumstances. Up to 
this time I suppose that the various styles of 
building were in order about as follows : first, 
the structure of logs, which was part dwelling 

43 



FARMINGTON 

and part fort, with or without a stone chim- 
ney — in the early days one of a group sur- 
rounded by a stockade as a defense against the 
Indians: then the square frame house, with an 
enormous chimney stack in the middle, toward 
which the roof sloped from all the four sides: 
then the house with two gables, with the great 
chimney still in the center, with projecting 
front said to have been designed for defense 
against attacks by Indians, and long lean-to 
roof in the rear: then the gambrel-roofed cot- 
tage, and more pretentious " old Colonial " 
mansion, a building of much dignity; and 
finally, about the first of this century, the 
more or less classic buildings, with broad and 
imposing pediments and high columns, Doric, 
Ionic, Corinthian, and nondescript. After 
that the deluge! 

The most considerable of these buildings is 
that which has been occupied for so many years 
as the principal home of Miss Porter's famous 
seminary, a building to which many a fond 
recollection points on the part of mothers and 
daughters in all quarters of the Union. I 
doubt whether there is another upon our soil 
the memory of which is so fondly cherished by 
so many, for such a reason. One by one a 
considerable number of the noted residences 
of old have also been appropriated to the use 
of this little community, but the school still 
continued in the great brick building over- 

44 



FARMINGTON 

grown with vines, which faces the New 
Britain road as it descends the hill. This was 
erected for a hotel in the twenties, a little 
later than the period of which I am mainly 
writing, to accommodate the vast traveling 
public that was to be brought hither by way of 
the Farmington Canal, but which, alas! never 
came. It succeeded a frame tavern, parts of 
which, or of the structures connected with 
which, still survive in the gymnasium and in 
the Music Cottage, and that is the only man- 
ner in which, as a hotel, it did succeed. 

The Canal — the ill-fated canal, about 
which so many bright anticipations were 
formed, was opened gayly in 1828. Edward 
Hooker writes: " Friday, June 20th; very fine 
weather. A multitude of people collected 
this afternoon to witness the launching and 
sailing of the first canal Boat that has been 
seen at Farmington. Everything was con- 
ducted well, Bell ringing, cannon firing, and 
music from the Phoenix Band. About two 
hundred gentlemen and ladies, who were 
previously invited & furnished with tickets, 
sailed to and over the aqueduct & back again. 
The boat was drawn at first by four & after- 
ward by three large grey horses, handsomely 
decked, and rode by as many black boys, 
dressed in white. Crackers & cheese, lemon- 
ade, wine, etc., were furnished to the guests, 
and the musicians performed very finely on 

45 



FARMINGTON 

the passage. The Boat was named James 
Hillhouse with three cheers while passing the 
Aqueduct." This was, as I have said, in 
1828; in 1848, the Farmington Canal died, 
not having yet attained its majority — I fear 
unwept, unhonored, and unsung. 

The present aspect of Farmington depends 
about as much upon its trees as upon its build- 
ings. In this respect we must believe that a 
momentous change has occurred since the time 
of which I am writing. The great elm, 
nearly opposite the Elm Tree Inn, and the 
tree behind the Inn, with one other which 
died, were planted in 1762, one hundred and 
thirty-four years ago. Tradition — I know 
not how authentic — claims that a large elm, 
still standing in a yard at the southern end of 
the town, was planted to commemorate the 
declaration of peace with Great Britain at 
the termination of the Revolutionary War. I 
am forced to question whether there is any 
other tree now standing within the village 
which was planted much more than eighty 
years since. If there be, it must have been 
extremely young at the period in question. 
What must we think of in place of those with 
which we are now familiar? Of the Lom- 
bardy poplars, of all trees in the world! 
There was a row of Lombardy poplars close 
around the church, and there was a double 
row along the path to the street; Lombardy 

46 



FARMINGTON 

poplars were planted around the green, " they 
lined the village street and were planted in 
double rows through the cemetery." 

How far these were used throughout the 
village, it is impossible now to say, — probably 
only here and there, but fashion is very strong, 
and we know what a fashion there was at one 
time for these trees. I have found traces of 
them here and there, and especially may men- 
tion those in the school grounds near the west 
corner, some now standing along my fence on 
the ledge near Sunset Rock, and others along 
the next fence to the eastward. Think what 
the village must have been as compared with 
the village of the present, if this were the 
characteristic tree, even to a moderate extent! 
It calls to mind the dialogue in our old read- 
ing books, wherein the Macedonian says, 
" Art thou the Thracian robber of whose 
exploits I have heard so much?" because of 
the startling nature of the suggested com- 
parison with which it ends: "Alexander to a 
robber! Let me reflect." 

It was in this village in 1810 and in the 
parlors of Rev. Dr. Porter, that there was 
organized that body destined to become 
famous as the A. B. C. F. M. — or the Ameri- 
can Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis- 
sions, and Governor Treadwell was its first 
President. It is not the least important cir- 
cumstance connected with this organization 

47 



FARMINGTON 

that, by a kind or an unkind fate, it within 
recent years became the scene of a contest 
between the old and the new theologies, sure 
to have an important bearing upon the future 
thought and faith of the world. 

What were the life and manners of the time 
of which I write — of the Farmington of eighty 
years ago? 

It is impossible to make a finished picture; 
we must be satisfied with a line here and a line 
there. There must have been something 
striking in the aspect of the place, at least to 
the childish eye. Elihu Burritt, once known 
as "the Learned Blacksmith," said in 1872: 
" When I made my first journey to Farming- 
ton, I stepped off the whole distance (from 
New Britain, ' ye Great Swamp,' as it 
was then called) with a pair of legs not much 
longer than those of a carpenter's compass. . . 
After the longest walk I had ever made on 
my small bare feet, we came suddenly upon 
the view of this glorious valley, and of the 
largest city I had ever conceived of. I was 
smitten with wonder. I dared not go any 
farther, though urged by my older brothers. 
I clambered up the Sunset Rock and sitting 
down on the edge with my feet over the side 
looked off upon the scene with a feeling like 
that of a man first coming in view of Rome 
and its St. Peter's. I had never before seen 
a church with a steeple, and measuring this 

4.S 



FARMINGTON 

above us with a child's eye, it seemed to reach 
into the very heavens." 

The rural surroundings do not appear to 
have affected all at that time as they do most 
of us to-day. Edward Hooker says in his 
journal (January 12, 1809), "Could not 
avoid being at the windows to gaze at and 
admire the mountains all around the town, 
especially the North Mountain near our 
friend Col. Norton's, about 3 or 4 miles off. 
I thought the prospect from my father's a 
charming one. My mother wondered at my 
curiosity, and said that range of ugly, broken, 
barren mountains was by no means a grateful 
object for her sight, but rather the reverse. 
She could see in it nothing to admire, nothing 
calculated to attract the attention." 

The old life was in many ways a hard one 
both for men and women, but I imagine that 
the women had the worst of it. There were 
few servants excepting menservants, and few 
of these were engaged in domestic labor. 
There were some negro slaves, one of whom 
was emancipated in 18 16, as the following 
document shows: "Whereas, on application 
made by me, Joshua Youngs, of Farmington 
in the County of Hartford, to one of the Civil 
Authority, and two of the Selectmen of said 
Farmington, they have signed a certificate that 
* Titus,' a black man, now or late my slave, 
is in good health and is not of greater age than 

49 



FARMINGTON 

forty-five years, nor less age than twenty-five 
years, and upon examination of said Titus 
they are convinced that he is desirous of being 
made free. Therefore be it known to all 
whom it may concern, that I have and hereby 
do completely emancipate and set at liberty 
the said Titus, so that neither I nor any claim- 
ing under me shall hereafter have any right 
whatever to his services in virtue of his being 
my slave. 

" Done at Farmington this ioth day of 
January, a. d. 1816, 

" Joshua Youngs, 
" In presence of John Mix, Samuel Cowls, 

"John Mix, 
" Register." ^ 

There were still slaves in Connecticut in 
1 840, and in New Jersey there were said to be 
eighteen slaves remaining in i860, the year 
before the War of the Rebellion. 

A girl seated at a flax wheel, spinning in 
the open air when the weather was fine, you 
may well suppose was a pretty sight, and no 
young girl need think the portion of her day 
so spent very hardly employed. She might 
not be able to sing with Senta the music of 
the " Flying Dutchman," but she had her own 
familiar music, and I warrant you she made 
her account of it. Then there were the weav- 
ing and the bleaching and the making of the 
garments both for themselves and for the men- 

50 



FARMINGTON 

folk. The knitting of stockings was never 
ended. I believe that no young woman was 
ready to be married until she had a pillowcase- 
ful of stockings, and could sweep the hearth 
without moving the andirons. Then there 
were the washing and the ironing. A great 
wash boiler hung from a crane in the huge 
kitchen fireplace for weekly use, and from 
the same crane by pothooks and trammels 
hung the various brass or iron vessels which 
were used in the cooking. The meats were 
roasted before the fire on a spit, or in a tin or 
iron Dutch oven, as it was called. Opening 
from the kitchen was the dome of the great 
brick oven in which bread and pies were 
baked. I believe that one still remains, open- 
ing from the Reading room of the Elm Tree 
Inn, and there are doubtless many others in 
the village. In this oven a great fire was 
built, and when the bricks had become 
thoroughly heated the fire was drawn, the 
oven was swept out, and the articles to be 
baked were put in place. 

Then candles must be dipped or molded, 
but molding was a late refinement. The 
dipping was done by tying a number of wicks 
at intervals along a stick and lowering them 
repeatedly into the melted tallow, until 
enough had adhered to give sufficient thick- 
ness. The fat not used for candles, and the 
ashes from the hearth, must be saved and em- 

51 



FARMINGTON 

ployed in making the barrels of soft soap, of 
which a free use was needed to keep the house 
as sweet and clean as the accomplished house- 
wife required. 

There was chinaware for the table, the 
real thing, as I have said, in some houses, but 
this was not general, and it was kept for 
special occasions. For ordinary purposes 
there were stoneware and earthenware, a 
substantial white ware being used on the 
table, I believe, for the most part, then as 
now. There was doubtless also more or less 
use of pewter vessels. Even as late as my 
own childhood, I remember that at the board- 
ing school in Pennsylvania where I learned 
small Latin and no Greek at all, our milk and 
our coffee were served in large heavy pewter 
porringers, without handles. 

There was also some silverware upon the 
tables of well-to-do families: this, too, was 
the real thing: triple and quadruple plate had 
not then taken possession of all households. 
But there were no silver forks, either real or 
plated. The forks were of sharp steel, and 
two-tined at that; I remember when we had 
no other. There is an apocryphal story that 
at one time fashion required that soup should 
be taken with a fork, as within recent years 
it has been decreed in regard to ice cream. If 
this were so in the days of the two-tined steel 
fork, we must believe that, in those days at 

52 



FARMINGTON 

least, patience was permitted to have her per- 
fect work. Merely the chasing of peas was 
attended with all the interest and excitement 
of fox-hunting. 

The clothing of the women was for the 
most part of various woolen fabrics and of 
ginghams, calicos, cambrics, and muslins; the 
cotton goods were just coming freely into use: 
that of the men was usually of homespun wool 
and of leather, though the latter was becom- 
ing less usual. Nankeens were also brought 
from China, and doubtless used by both men 
and women. There were ten times as many 
sheep in the county in 1810 as in 1880. I 
should not be surprised if there were a hun- 
dred times as many as there are now. Per- 
haps this is not singular if many of the sheep 
of the early days were similar to the bipedal 
one of which Edward Hooker speaks on April 
25, 1818: "Among a flock of sheep on the 
road in Cheshire, we saw a lamb whose hind 
legs were short & blunt below the hams, as if 
they had been frozen and lost their powers, & 
strange as is the fact he was actually walking 
about on his two fore-legs solely — except that 
occasionally he seemed to balance himself and 
rest a little on his hind stumps." Or if they 
were ordinarily such good electrical attrac- 
tions as some in 1822, of which Mr. Hooker 
also writes (July 24): "There were heavy 
thunder showers at night. A flock of sheep, 

53 



FARMINGTON 

forty-three in number, of which about half 
were very valuable merinos, belonging to my 
friend Egbert Cowles were killed by light- 
ning — they were lying close together under a 
large tree." 

While there was much, and often constant 
work to be done, there was also recreation. 
All, even the young ladies, discussed theology, 
somewhat hotly occasionally, but nevertheless 
they were able to dance and engage in other 
exercises of a frivolous character. This was 
always so, but undoubtedly the epoch under 
notice was in some respects one of special 
levity. President Porter says of the end of 
the century: "The old Meeting-house began 
to rustle with silks, and to be gay with rib- 
bons. The lawyers wore silk and velvet 
breeches; broadcloth took the place of home- 
spun for coat and overcoat, and corduroy dis- 
placed leather for breeches and pantaloons. 
As the next century opened, pianos were heard 
in the best houses, thundering out the ' Battle 
of Prague ' as a tour de force, and the most 
pretentious of phaetons rolled through the 
village. Houses were built with dancing 
halls for evening gayety; and the most liberal 
hospitality, recommended by the best of 
cookery, was dispensed at sumptuous dinners 
and suppers." 

When it came to imported cloths, a good 
round payment was in order. E. D. Mans- 

54 



FARMINGTON 

field, who was a pupil of Edward Hooker, 
in 1819, in his "Personal Recollections" 
describes his own suit as of bright blue broad- 
cloth at $14 per yard, with bright gilt but- 
tons. He saw two or three gentlemen about 
this time in Connecticut (he does not say in 
Farmington, but I have no doubt that he 
could have seen such there) " dressed in the 
revolutionary style, with powdered hair, white 
top-boots, silk breeches and silver knee 
buckles." I myself remember two gentlemen 
in Pennsylvania, one, among my earliest recol- 
lections in the forties, and one some ten years 
later, who always dressed in substantially the 
same style. 

Speaking of the church, Mansfield says, 
" but I must say that in the service the chief 
objects of my devotion were the bright and 
handsome girls around." Strange to relate, 
this was some twenty-five years before the 
Farmington Seminary was started. His first 
introduction to society here was at the house 
of the Hon. Timothy Pitkin. There were 
present five young men and eighteen young 
ladies, more than half of whom were named 
Cowles. It is said that there were three 
hundred persons of that name in the town. 
It was with these young men, perhaps, 
even more than it is in our own day, as it 
was with the Light Brigade; Cowles to the 
right of them, Cowles to the left of them, 

55 



FARMINGTON 

Cowles in the front of them: always outnum- 
bered. 

Mansfield says that it was not customary 
for the older people to appear at the young 
people's parties. 

One of the diversions indulged in largely a 
few years earlier may possibly not have been 
continued to this day — that is, the smallpox 
party. Before the efficacy of vaccination was 
discovered it was customary to inoculate with 
the smallpox at isolated buildings, where 
patients would have every possible attention. 
Such a building stood some three miles from 
here, near the old road to New Britain, to the 
eastward of Rattlesnake Mountain, and was 
used during the last decade of the eighteenth 
century. Near by is a flat rock upon which 
can still be seen rudely carved the names of a 
large number of the convalescing patients. 
Mrs. Earle quotes this singular letter of 1775 : 
" Mrs. Storer has invited Mrs. Martin to 
take the small pox in her house; if Mrs. 
Wentworth desires to get rid of her fears in 
the same way we will accomodate her in the 
best way we can. I've -several friends that 
I've invited, and none of them will be more 
welcome than Mrs. Wentworth." 

Though wheeled vehicles seem to have been 
in common use, the saddle was still preferred 
by many, and the pillion had not long, if in- 
deed it had yet wholly, fallen into disuse. 

56 



FARMINGTON 

Thanksgiving Day was the great festival 
of the year. In fifteen years of Edward 
Hooker's journal, I do not find the slightest 
allusion to Christmas. The first mention of 
it (this in connection with a sermon) is in 
1825. But Sunday, or the Sabbath, they had 
always with them — that is, from sundown on 
Saturday night until sundown on Sunday 
night. Serious dissipation upon Sunday did 
not go unchallenged. Thus Edward Hooker 
says in 1809, January 23: "The Captain 
[Porter] entertained me with a history of my 
classmate Champion's arrest & trial for travel- 
ing in the mail stage on Sunday." 

In the evening the situation was different. 
The village has been well supplied with 
libraries in its time. The meeting for the 
drawing of books and for discussion of various 
subjects was on the first Sunday evening of 
the month, but Mr. Gay seems to imply that 
it was especially the elders* who attended upon 
that occasion, while the boys and girls re- 
mained at home for quiet games, and the older 
youth possibly indulged in moderation in that 
occupation which in the rural districts, in my 
early days, I have heard denominated spark- 
ing. 

It appears that Sunday evening was also the 
favorite time for weddings. I find constant 
allusion to such occasions, of which here is one 
from Mr. Hooker's journal: "Sunday Dec. 

57 



FARMINGTON 

29 [181 1 ]. Clear and Cold. Evening; 
Agreeably to invitation attended the wedding 
of R. Cowles & Fanny Deming at Mr. 
Deming's. Large concourse of relations and 
friends present, perhaps sixty — not much 
ceremony. The parties were seated in the 
room when the company arrived. None stood 
up with them — but Mr. Camp and Caroline 
sat near them and after the ceremony handed 
round two courses of cake, three of wine, and 
one of apples. The company in the different 
rooms then conversed half an hour — then 
those who could sing collected and sung very 
handsomely a number of psalm tunes, — and 
half an hour after had quite a merry cushion 
dance. I came away about 9 leaving still a 
large number capering round the cushion." 

What a " Cushion dance " is, or was, I will 
not undertake to say. 

I have said that these were prosperous 
times. When Chauncey Deming died, he 
was estimated to be worth two hundred thou- 
sand dollars, a fortune probably equivalent to 
one of five or ten millions to-day. Mr. 
Deming was a rich man, but had he possessed 
ten millions, he would have been forced to 
remain without comforts and luxuries which 
are now the daily privilege of the ordinary 
clerk or thrifty mechanic. There was no 
railroad, no telegraph, no telephone. There 
was no electric light, no gas, no kerosene — 

58 



FARMINGTON 

not even, I am told, to any considerable 
extent, the malodorous whale oil of my early 
days. There were no water works, with 
pipes running through the house; there was 
usually no water in the bedroom, but ordinary 
ablutions were performed beside the kitchen 
pump or in the washhouse, in water direct 
from the well. I have been told of one 
fortunate family (Dr. Porter's) which had a 
terrace wall in its garden, of which advantage 
was taken to install a shower bath by building 
a shelter at the foot, and letting on an infant 
deluge at the top. There were no stoves, or 
there were only isolated specimens, in the dead 
of winter no warm chambers, for the fuel was 
wood and the fires were ordinarily confined 
to the hearths in the keeping room and the 
kitchen, where the inmates were liable to bake 
upon one side and to freeze upon the other. 
The warming pan was a blessed contrivance 
by which, in case of necessity, a little suggestion 
of the tropics could be imparted to the icy 
sheets. Edward Hooker tells of one terrific 
spell when he found it impossible to sleep for 
the bitter cold. Twenty-five cords of wood, 
which would be equal to a body four feet 
wide, four feet high, and two hundred feet 
long, were, I believe, considered a fair win- 
ter's supply for a household. 

It is a tradition in my family, which appears 
to be supported at least in part by documen- 

59 



FARMINGTON 

tary evidence, and which I like to encourage, 
that anthracite coal was discovered in Penn- 
sylvania, in 1783 or 1784, by my grandfather's 
brother. Dr. Franklin, David Rittenhouse 
the astronomer, and others were interested in 
his enterprise, but no method of using the 
coal was devised for many years. In 18 12, 
Colonel George Shoemaker took nine wagon- 
loads of coal to Philadelphia: " he sold two 
loads and gave the rest away, and some of the 
purchasers obtained a writ for his arrest as an 
impostor and a swindler." 

To me, this foray into the past has been 
like crossing a river into a new land and 
making friends with a host of new people. I 
find these houses tenanted and these paths 
trodden by a varied multitude to whom here- 
after they will still belong, of many of whom, 
of their true selves, of their characters and 
their thoughts, I know more than I know of 
most of those now living about me. I see the 
venerable Dr. Porter, still a young man, 
active, zealous, and beloved: I see Judge 
Whitman, and listen to his discourse upon 
precedents, and upon old saws and modern 
instances. I see the dignified Governor 
Treadwell, sturdy, though weighted with the 
responsibility of many and important causes, 
severe, yet meaning to be just: I listen to 
Major Hooker as he tells his more or less 

60 




FARMINGTON 

clearly remembered reminiscences of the old 
times, and of that which he had heard from 
the fathers who were before him: I see the 
spruce and prosperous Timothy Cowles, or 
hear the wealthy Chauncey Deming cantering 
along the street or laying down the rule as to 
the proper income for a minister oi the gospel : 
I take note of the experiences of the practical 
Squire Mix: I appear to approach the foun- 
tain head of legislative wisdom as I learn of 
the debates in Congress fresh from the lips of 
the Hon. Timothy Pitkin: above all, I listen 
to the very human and lovable, though not 
ecclesiastically regular Dr. Todd, as he drops 
words of wisdom and kindness, or draws from 
the strings of his violin echoes of that music 
of which his heart is full. And dozens of 
others rise before me, men and women both, 
who will forever people these shady ways 
along which they passed so often. 

Not that all, even then, were to be counted 
among the sheep, and dignified and deb- 
onair. They had their goats then as now, 
and their Philistines. And they had their 
dramas too, their comedies and their tragedies : 
their tragedies which were such to all the 
world, and those deeper tragedies which pass 
behind closed doors, and within aching hearts, 
which dull the light of the sun and obliterate 
the stars, and take the glory from the spring, 
and wither the life of the soul; tragedies 

61 



FARMINGTON 

which must now be passed by with averted 
eyes, or lightly touched, because those survive 
whose nerves still respond to them with a 
personal thrill. 

Of course it was a period when the world 
was losing its virtue, its industry, and its 
earnestness: all periods are such. Governor 
Treadwell writes: "The young ladies are 
changing their spinning wheels for forte- 
pianos and forming their manners at the danc- 
ing school rather than in the school of indus- 
try. Labor is growing into disrepute, and the 
time when the independent farmer and 
reputable citizen could whistle at the tail of 
his plough with as much serenity as the 
cobbler over his last, is fast drawing to a 
close. The present time marks a revolution 
of taste and manners of immense import to 
society, but while others glory in this as a 
great advancement in refinement, we cannot 
help dropping a tear at the close of the Golden 
Age of our ancestors, while with a pensive 
pleasure we reflect on the past, and with sus- 
pense and apprehension anticipate the future." 

We can imagine with what satisfaction he 
penned and conned over these smoothly flow- 
ing periods. " Behold we are the people, and 
wisdom will die with us." I am not sure but 
that I have heard some such vaticination as 
the foregoing at other times, and in other 
places: even the air at Underledge seems at 

62 



FARMINGTON 

intervals to bear a burden in like minor key. 
It is a good many thousand years since this 
note first breathed upon the bosom of the air. 
I imagine that as the sun drifts to the west- 
ward with us, the shadows lengthen and 
become somewhat distorted and slightly 
grotesque, and we, whoever we may be, upon 
whom its rays fall, are apt to look back upon 
the time when it was in the meridian, as to the 
golden age. 

" Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the 
shore, 
And the individual withers, and the world is more and more. 

" Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden 
breast, 
Full of sad experience, moving toward the stillness of his rest. 

" Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose 
runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of 
the suns." 

Aye, though looking back upon those early 
days we see men of a sturdy race, strong men, 
and faithful men, and true men, eminently 
fitted to cope with the labors of their time; 
while we see dignity and honor meeting with 
their fair acceptance and respect, we also see 
another sort, of which our eyes are not 
enamored: if we see courtliness and comeli- 
ness, we see also grossness in family circles 
where to-day such exhibitions would be looked 

63 



FARMINGTON 

upon as an almost unheard of and an unspeak- 
able calamity. There are some things the 
loss of which we regret; but we cannot but 
remember that the setting sun bathes with 
glory even the most ragged rocks, and that the 
light which we see when we turn to look be- 
hind us is but the reflection of that great 
beacon which ever gleams before. Tempora 
mutantur, et nos mutamur in Mis: the times 
change and we change in them. And it may 
well be that neither they nor we are neces- 
sarily worse, simply because different. 
And so I know that I was wiser 

" When I dipt into the future far as human eye could seej 
Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would 
be. 



range, 
Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of 
change. ' * 



64 



IV 
UNDERLEDGE 

IN summer-time the " Hanger " masks the 
ledge completely. In the winter season, 
when the trees are bare, I see between 
their trunks the slope with its jutting 
crags and at the top the straggling and 
broken rail fence, mended with savage barbed 
wire, with which my neighbor assumes to 
guard me from the intrusion of the cows: an 
ineffective attempt, for these athletic beasts 
fleer at fences, as love laughs at locksmiths. 

Upon the slope of the mountain meadow 
twelve or fifteen rods in front of the " bluff 
rock," as it is known in the old records, stands 
the new cottage. I have heard of people who 
were said to have been born old. I can 
scarcely think that they can have been wholly 
agreeable, but with cottages it is otherwise, 
and in the devising and building of Under- 
ledge I have sought — honestly, and without 
subterfuge — to make a home which, being in 
the style of the previous century, will take but 
a little seasoning by rain and wind and sun to 
prove its right to its location. And I think 
that I have achieved a thorough success. For 

6 5 



UNDERLEDGE 

anything in the appearance of the heavy stone 
walls, they might have been standing at the 
time, and have echoed back that " shot heard 
round the world " on the ever memorable 
nineteenth of April, 1775, to say nothing of 
the fratricidal shots heard at Baltimore on 
that other nineteenth of April, 1861. Above 
the walls, the red cedar shingles from far 
Oregon still retain a certain rawness; their 
rich color has disappeared with the rain drops 
down the leaders; they are passing through 
their uninteresting stage : but little time will be 
required, however, to bring the whole into har- 
mony. In matters of beauty and picturesque- 
ness, all that nature needs is to be let alone. 

The cottage rests upon a slight terrace 
which occurred casually in the molding of 
the sandstone slope during the past few thou- 
sand or few hundred thousand years, during 
which this peneplain has been worn down 
between the old stream of lava which forms 
the ledge, and the gravelly intervale where the 
great glacial sheet has here and there dumped 
its curious kames and eskers which the natives 
call Indian mounds. This terrace has been 
slowly accented by the furrows of cultivation, 
and more rapidly by the distribution of the 
material taken out in digging the cellar. 

By the way, I like to use these strange and 
newfangled terms such as appear above, for 
they sound as if I knew a great deal about the 

66 



UNDERLEDGE 

matter and you will have to go to your diction- 
aries to find out what they mean, or else re- 
main uninstructed. My friend the Reverend 
took exception to my use of the term talus. 
He said that it was not a literary word. But 
I meant talus, and nothing else, — why should 
I not say it ? You remember the reason given 
by Adam for calling the dog by that term 
when he was naming the animals: — he said 
that it looked like a dog, it moved like a dog, 
and it barked like a dog, — therefore, he called 
it a dog. I know no better way of choosing 
a word to describe a thing than to take that 
one which expresses it. 

Past one end of the cottage, and somewhat 
diagonally toward the front, runs an old 
stone wall. A portion of this, near the wood, 
furnished much of the material used in the 
construction of the building. A fine round- 
headed white ash tree keeps sentinel at the 
point where a path breaks through this wall to 
wander down toward the pools at the foot of 
a rapidly sloping ancient pasture, now grow- 
ing up in park-like fashion with thrifty cedars. 
When I took possession, the ground upon the 
upper side of this wall was probably a foot or 
two higher than that upon the lower side, the 
accumulation of years of washing by storms 
and of ploughing, and this feature also w T as 
taken advantage of in the shaping of the little 
lawn. 

6 7 



UNDERLEDGE 

In front, at the lower end of the descending 
lawn, a small grove of white birches and 
cedars and sumachs has been planted, and 
some distance beyond, on the farther side of 
an old wall surmounted by an irregular fence, 
which separates me from my nearest neighbor, 
are old apple trees which bloom in the spring 
to my infinite delight. Over the tops of these 
appear the trees and roofs at the north end of 
the village, and beyond them the valley and 
the hills, and the sky, and in the night the 
bright stars. 

The builders have given me the keys and 
have departed: the movers have brought in 
my household goods, my Lares and my 
Penates, and they also are gone. The night 
has fallen, and without, it lies softly on the 
snow-clad fields, while within it is illumined 
for a little space by the lamp beside which I 
write. Silence reigns around me, for I am 
alone upon the premises save for the mice 
which, having been lured by the dainty scraps 
dropped from the lunch baskets of the mechan- 
ics, have already made themselves fully at 
home. This room should be the study, but 
it is in fact chaos come again. Piles of 
pictures and big boxes of books encumber the 
floor, so that I need a compass to enable me 
to navigate among them. Around me gape 
the shelves, awaiting their load, the fond com- 
panions of my solitude, and I wonder how I 

68 



UNDERLEDGE 

am going to accommodate them all. Chaucer 
and Spenser, and Shakespere and Browning 
and Tennyson and Lowell and Curtis and 
Ruskin and Emerson and Longfellow and 
Dante and Scott and Bronte and Austen and 
Thackeray, and Darwin and Spencer, and 
hundreds of others — how every name brings 
up wondrous visions! and the big histories, 
Duruy and Guizot and Rambaut and Green 
and so on, — and the dictionaries and the en- 
cyclopaedias, the Century and Murray, and 
the Britannica and Grove, and the others — 
where are they all to go and stand each in his 
place of appropriate honor and each within 
easy reach of my hand ? 

Ah! but this point I have already surren- 
dered without a fight, and upstairs and down- 
stairs, and in my lady's chamber (if I may 
make bold to have such an apartment), wher- 
ever a space was to be found, the shelves have 
been placed. And what a beautiful time I 
shall have, trying to remember where I am to 
discover this and that and the other comrade, 
now of necessity disjoined from old com- 
panions, and thrust into new combinations. 
Occasionally something besides misery makes 
strange bedfellows. Here, for example, is a 
strapping big grenadier who belongs beside 
this powder monkey; they are old companions 
in arms, have passed through many a fray to- 
gether, and are in fact two souls with but a 

69 



UNDERLEDGE 

single thought. But the monkey will have to 
be put into a cage that fits his size, and the 
fellow with the muff on his head must find a 
place upon a lower shelf, or turn in on his 
side as if he had already heard " taps " beaten. 
And so the " Mabinogeon " will have to hob- 
nob with Palmer's " Mushrooms," and " Hy- 
perion " with " Tartarin de Tarascon," 
Shakespere with Guizot, " Sir Roger de 
Coverley " with " The Sparrowgrass Papers," 
and Herbert Spencer with " Patroclus and 
Penelope " and " Gardening for Pleasure and 
Profit." 

Well, never mind. Do we not knock about 
every day among all sorts of fellows, and 
find something in common between most of 
them? And even the contrast is in itself re- 
freshing. Only there must be an inner circle 
close at hand, and if I cannot have within it 
all that I desire, there will at least be some 
that are among the dearest, and some without 
whom life would be quite another business. 
And here shall be all of Shakespere, and of 
Emerson, and of Browning, and all that I 
own of Tennyson, and Dante, and the 
" Earthly Paradise," and " Prue and I," and 
" Modern Painters," and the " Cathedral," 
and Chaucer and Spenser, and " The Voices 
of the Night," and George Herbert, and 
Clough and a lot of others — as many as the 
corner will hold. And it isn't so far after all 

70 



UNDERLEDGE 

to the other shelves when rooms adjoin, and 
there is only one flight of steps to the second 
story, and the studding is less than eight feet 
high. 

And I wonder where the pictures will go? 
They don't amount to much in market value, 
but they are cherished companions, and they 
form so many windows through which I look 
out upon the past, and have visions of other 
climes and other peoples. There are portraits 
of old friends, whose lips have said good-by 
for the last time before embarking upon that 
strange voyage concerning which we speculate 
so much, and with so little effective response; 
and portraits of the World's great ones who 
have been gone so long that we think of them 
no longer as dead but as living. And there 
are copies of the masterpieces of these, and 
shadows of monumental piles of the artistic 
past; bits of picturesque nature, and the 
scribe's own memoranda of other days and 
other scenes. Well, they will doubtless all 
fall into their places within a few days, and 
gradually grow familiar again in their new- 
relations. 

And now the scribe turns back a year in his 
musings, wanders again over the open hill- 
side, replaces the four stones which were to 
mark the location of the four corners of the 
cottage, sits down upon the old wall under the 
spreading branches of the ash tree, and looks 

71 



UNDERLEDGE 

through the vacant space to be occupied by the 
finished cottage, dreaming of the future and 
the things that might be. And he remembers 
some things which have happened since then, 
of which no faintest whisper was borne upon 
the air. Uhomme propose, et Dieu dispose, 
and sometimes it is quite as well that Uhomme 
doesn't know what is coming. Fortunately 
there dawns a New Year's day with every 
heart beat, and shall not each that follows 
in the coming twelvemonth be the happiest 
one of all the glad New Year? 

And so the scribe comes back to the present, 
and closing the desk which is to be the work 
bench of the future, takes his lamp, and climb- 
ing over the great cases and carefully avoid- 
ing the brittle frames, makes his way through 
the silent house and up the stairway which has 
no strange stories yet to tell, and has not 
learned to creak, and takes possession of that 
upper chamber which is henceforth to be his. 
And though the starry lamps are not hung out 
to mark the stages of the night, and no breath 
comes to him from any one of all the millions 
that people the earth, to whom he is as if he 
were not, yet falls he softly into a deep and 
dreamless sleep. 

" And the night shall be filled with music, 
And the cares that infest the day 
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, 
And as silently steal away." 

72 



THE FOG 

THE tree tops on the slope loom 
vaguely through the fog which 
covers the valley and spreads up 
the. hillside. Farther off they be- 
come a mere blur, a slightly denser grayness 
where all is gray and mysterious. The gray 
stones of the wall of the house are cold and 
damp, and the moisture glistens upon the 
newly oiled floor of the porch. The snow 
which still lingers on the southward-sloping 
hills, and lies thick under shelter of woodland 
and wall, has a sodden, spiritless appearance, 
compared with that which it wore a month 
ago. The ashen tone everywhere prevalent 
dulls hope and dampens courage. 

I remember reading somewhere, a great 
many years ago, a novel entitled " Weary foot 
Common," written, if my memory does not 
betray me, by Leitch Ritchie. I recall noth- 
ing now of its story. I only have a sense of a 
waste of level plain near a great city, crossed 
by footpaths here and there, upon which the 
fog and mist descend from time to time, 
shrouding all details in their leaden pall, and 

73 



THE FOG 

making doubtful and somewhat dangerous the 
wanderings of those engulfed therein, even as 
the haze falls from time to time on the path 
of the hero, hiding from him light, life, and 
hope. 

The novel may not have been much of a 
novel, and the metaphor may have been a trifle 
overworked: I have not the least idea in re- 
gard to this, for it is longer than I like to 
remember since I read the book, and I have no 
recollection of ever having heard of anyone 
else doing so. I should like to see it again, to 
find how it would impress me. But for these 
many years this one picture presented in it has 
rested in my mind, continually recurring to 
thought, and keeping in memory, in the vague 
way that I have described, the book and its 
author, while hundreds of other volumes have 
one by one fallen back into the abyss of noth- 
ingness, so that their names and incidents 
would not awaken the slightest recollection. 

And now, as alone I cross the threshold of 
the new home and gaze out into the fog, the 
chill raw air penetrating my garments, and 
causing my flesh to creep, I feel a certain re- 
action after the accomplished task. Coventry 
Patmore, in " The Angel in the House," con- 
fesses to a chill which falls upon the lover 
even in the instant immediately following the 
attainment of his heart's desire, a sensation 
that if this were possible of attainment, it was 

74 



THE FOG 

not quite that which had been hoped for, — 
how does the phrase go ? 

" Poor in its need to be possessed," 

I think. There is something in this, per- 
haps, but there is probably more in the fact 
that " Othello's occupation's gone." It is 
said that were truth offered with the one 
hand, and the search after truth with the 
other, the wiser choice would be to accept the 
search after truth. Certain it is that there is 
no such sweetener of the sad hours, no such 
balm to the wounded spirit, as close occupa- 
tion in a worthy cause. 

" . . . Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," 

is a phrase that expresses or explains more 
than one situation to which we are wont. 
Undoubtedly it is possible to consider one's 
course in certain matters with too much care 
and deliberation. Then truly 

" the native hue of resolution 
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, 
And enterprises of great pith and moment 
With this regard their currents turn awry, 
And lose the name of action." 

But also there are for many persons in this 
weary world, often weary for such as they, 
occasions when the perplexities of life are 
insoluble, which perplexities recur to the spirit 
with a persistence of repetition and continu- 

75 



THE FOG 

ance which is appalling; and for such there is 
no anodyne like work, work which requires 
consecutive thought, and is accompanied or 
followed by a result apparent, but leading on 
to other work. For the moment, and perhaps 
for many moments, contemplation and fruit- 
less questioning are lost in productive and 
absorbing thought. 

Over the whist table last evening a dis- 
cussion was raised by the Professor, who re- 
marked that the greater part of our existence 
is passed in a condition of indifference, a 
merely negative situation, involving neither 
pleasure nor pain. To this, Piscator, the 
Engineer, and the Scribe all excepted. The 
Scribe indeed admitted that there might be 
some, perhaps many, whom life handled in 
such a way that neither elation nor depression 
accompanied their ordinary experiences. For 
himself, however, he could not so record it. 
Deeper than ever plummet soundeth were the 
depths to which from time to time he sank, 
but no power upon earth could keep him 
there; and the acuteness of the pain of one 
moment was only to be compared with the 
intensity of the pleasure of another. It might 
be that Agur was right in his desire that he 
be given neither poverty nor riches, and that 
he should be allowed to sail life's main upon 
an even keel, but for him fate had not so 
willed it. 

76 



THE FOG 

The Engineer in like manner compared his 
own experience of life's incidents to the active 
joy which he then felt in the cessation of pain 
wrought by a few unctuous drops from a 
strange bottle from foreign parts (the goiter 
in the neck of which was surely a grotesque 
joke upon the part of the worthy but sly 
monks who sent it forth) and to the preced- 
ing pain itself, too great, it seemed, to be 
appropriate to the slight cause from which it 
grew. 

The fisherman munched his cheese and re- 
called with such loving and lingering fondness 
the events of the day, — the stony brook, the 
overhanging branches, the speckled trout, — 
that no one could doubt how life affected 
him. 

Now, leaning upon the rail of the rustic 
porch, a tough cedar trunk to which the bark 
clings here and there, but which, where it has 
lost this screen, shows the most elaborate 
system of intaglio carving wrought by the 
patient worms, here in bold and intricately 
interlacing channels, there in delicate fairy 
tracery, I look into the dense fog and seek to 
decipher the secrets of the future. Who is 
the hero for whom the new home is to serve 
for a stage, and what is the drama which is 
there to be played out? For hero there must 
surely be, if no heroine, and life is so varied 
and so full of interest, when seen at the right 

77 



THE FOG 

angle and with a lens of the proper power, 
that we shall never lack for the drama. 

" Into each life some rain must fall, 
Some days must be dark and dreary," 

and tragedy is apt to occupy the boards. 

" But taking the year together, my dear, 
There isn't more cloud than sun" 

for most of us, and whatever the future may 
be, the world should be no worse for the play, 
if the actors bear their parts right nobly. 

" Then in life's goblet freely press 
The leaves that give it bitterness, 
Nor prize the colored waters less, 
For in thy darkness and distress 

New light and strength they give ! " 

And so, though the fog be thick and the 
heavens be gray, do thou " Go forth to meet 
the shadowy future without fear, and with a 
manly heart." 



78 



VI 
WAITING FOR THE RAIN 

THE well has been useless for weeks. 
A careful search along under the 
ledge revealed a copious spring, the 
waters from which found their way 
by various channels through the orchard and 
across the mountain meadow, making marshy 
ground of my hayfield. Tracing the tide 
back toward the cliff, and removing a ton or 
two of loose stone, I found the water issuing 
from the hillside, a tiny pearly stream. Alas ! 
but a few days later, and it had given me the 
slip, and sought a channel beneath. Another 
search developed another stream behind and 
nearer to the house, and this also I traced back 
toward the bluff rock, into the talus at its 
foot. Carefully removing stone after stone, 
I followed it as far as I dared ( for he that is 
familiar with it knows what it is to trifle 
with the talus of a trap ledge), and digging 
downward, made a little basin, in which the 
limpid and delicious beverage might tarry a 
while before hurrying on its way to the river. 
Selecting a mark by which to gauge it, a stone 
at the side of the basin upon which the spark 
of light reflected from the edge indicated the 

79 



WAITING FOR THE RAIN 

height of the water, I tested the flow with a 
quart measure; eight quarts per minute — 
ninety barrels per day. Surely a supply 
adequate for the purposes of anyone. And 
oh ! how delicious it was. 

So, pending a more satisfactory method, the 
pail was carried to and fro the short distance 
between the house and the spring, and every- 
one was happy. For two or three days the 
supply seemed to dwindle but slowly, and 
then I measured again: fifty barrels per day. 
I made the basin somewhat larger and deeper. 
The next day the spring was delivering at the 
rate of thirty-seven barrels. For two or three 
days it remained running at about the same 
rate, then fell to twenty-five barrels, then 
lower, ten barrels, and then, at the end of six- 
teen days, alas! it had gone completely dry, 
and the clay at the bottom of the basin was 
parched and cracked. 

There has not been enough rain at any time 
during the winter or spring to fill the cistern, 
and now but a few inches of water cover its 
bottom. The few drops of rain which have 
fallen upon the roof within the past week or 
two have been greedily absorbed by the dry 
shingles. 

Yet who would think it? Just a month 
ago the water from the melting snow came 
down from the hills, and our river went out 
over the valley, forming a great lake, upon 

80 



WAITING FOR THE RAIN 

which the gale raised waves formidable enough 
to cause would-be passengers to draw back 
from the frail canoe which was moored by the 
shore, ready to serve as transport to the 
further side. And still the waters must be 
trickling underground on the hillsides, where 
long roots may reach them, for cherry trees, 
pear trees, apple trees, peach trees are in 
bloom, all the trees of the forest and field are 
rushing into leaf, and the sugar maples are 
perfect pyramids of little parasols with long 
fringes. 

And the grass — oh! how lush and green it 
looks! especially on the mountain meadow, 
which was seeded down last autumn. Over 
the undulating slopes between the house and 
the road I see it waving, laughing in the hot 
air, with here and there a yellow spire of wild 
mustard which has suddenly flung its golden 
plumes to the breeze. 

But these are the old inhabitants that have 
a strong grip upon life. In past times they 
have struck their roots deep down in Mother 
Earth, and through innumerable tiny fibers 
they gather the nutritious juices that they 
need. Not so the new-comers. Here are 
trees and shrubs and climbing vines by the 
hundreds, newly planted like myself — azaleas 
and roses and spiraeas, honeysuckles and wis- 
tarias, maples and lindens and locusts and 
chestnuts and beeches and sweet shrub and 

81 



WAITING FOR THE RAIN 

ivy and a host of others, and they cry " give 
us to drink or we perish." Most, even of 
these, are opening their leaves, and spreading 
them to catch the nightly dews, strengthened 
perhaps by the elaborated sap already stored 
in their veins. 

And on the newly graded ground, grass 
seed has been sown, and lies waiting upon the 
parched surface. And the flower beds have 
been put in order, and this morning I planted 
the seeds in the " wild garden," thinking hope- 
fully that perhaps the long delay might be 
almost ended. For yesterday the barometer 
began to fall, though slightly, and a thunder- 
storm, the cloud summits of which, cleft here 
and there by lightning, just showed above the 
Burlington hills, and then passed slowly up 
the Naugatuck valley beyond. 

And this afternoon, as I write, I sit on the 
veranda waiting, waiting for the rain. Will 
it come? The haze lies over the valley and 
shrouds the distant hills, concealing those upon 
the horizon, and softening while relieving the 
outline of those which are nearer. The fleecy 
clouds in the sky become more and more 
numerous, but look dry and hot. They are 
mostly without characteristic shape, but just 
now I see to the northward a " thunder-head " 
clearly defined against the pure blue, which 
elsewhere is mostly covered with a gauzy veil. 
A fine breeze rises and tempers the oppressive 

82 



WAITING FOR THE RAIN 

heat, and ripples over the surface of the pools 
in the marshy pasture. 

As the cloud-ships pass before the sun, their 
shadows swiftly march over the waving grass 
of the meadow, envelop me for a moment, 
and climb the hills at my back. But over the 
valley at my feet they seem to have a more 
stately motion, their speed growing less in the 
distance, while the hills beyond disappear and 
again appear as, one by one, they are in turn 
enveloped and released. 

Will it come — the rain? I fear not, and 
yet the barometer still is gently falling. The 
clouds, I believe, are always of vapor, and yet 
they look so dry, as if you might wrap yourself 
in them as in light thistledown. I heard the 
tree toads this morning, but they are treacher- 
ous promisers. They have often sung to me 
their siren song. Now I hear the robins and 
sundry other birds, which seem to have been 
awakened by the refreshing breeze; from my 
neighbor's house comes the sound of the 
carpenter's hammer ; from the village streets I 
hear the bells from a passing team ; in the 
distance are children's voices. And as for a 
moment, I raise my eyes from my paper, a 
yellow butterfly wings its way across the field 
— Psyche, in search of she scarce knows what ; 
the something for which the wistful soul is 
always longing, but how seldom obtains in its 
completeness ! 

83 



VII 
THE WIND 

WHEW! How it blows! One 
who has the privilege of living 
at Underledge does not need to 
go to the top of one of the great 
towers which modern imitators of the builders 
of Babel are erecting in the crowded cities, in 
order to receive the impression which he might 
obtain upon the topmast of a vessel at sea. 
There is no object standing as high as the cot- 
tage in the direction of " the Northwest wind, 
Keewaydin," nearer than four or five miles 
away, and as it ramps and tears around us I 
am glad that the walls are thick and that they 
are of solid rock. 

No weather-strips have yet been put in 
place, and the searching blast finds its way 
through the cracks, and sets the draperies to 
waving. I dare not open the doors or win- 
dows upon that side of the house, lest all the 
loose articles in the room be sent flying in a 
heterogeneous flock to the farther corner. 
The piping is shrill through each narrow 
crevice, and if I venture for a moment to place 
the asolian harp upon the window-ledge with 

84 



THE WIND 

ever so small a crack opened, a piercing shriek 
reproaches me for the inhuman act. The 
trees along the ledge wave and bend with a 
tumult and a roar like that of the stormy 
ocean beating upon a rugged shore. 

Sitting in the middle of my library, or 
workshop, or study, the " keeping-room," — 
for it is each of these, — all is calm and still. 
But it is as if I were in a tower built upon a 
rocky headland beside the raging sea, and an 
irrepressible feeling of unrest is compelled by 
the furious onset of the gale. I am reminded 
of the wild rush of the waters on that mo- 
mentous voyage when I saw the world, as 
leaning against the side of my stateroom, and 
supporting myself by the window-frame, I 
glanced over the sloping deck, wearily watch- 
ing that I might escape the mad assaults of my 
trunk, as it charged to and fro and threatened 
to rend me limb from limb if I incautiously 
stood in its way. I could imagine myself the 
hero of Victor Hugo's " Ninety-Three," and 
my trunk the great gun which is therein 
represented as taking possession of the gun- 
deck of the ship. 

It was my one outing upon the high seas, 
and our big boat pitched and tossed like a chip 
upon the surface, alone in the center of that 
great circle, with the mighty deep, nothing but 
innocent little drops of water, profoundly 
stirred, and erecting its crests high in the face 

85 



THE WIND 

of heaven, while great valleys opened between, 
stretching far away toward the horizon. 
Nothing but air and water, water and air. 
To be sure, the water was three or four miles 
deep, but then six feet would have been 
enough for me, and to spare. 

What a difference it makes how things are 
placed! I sit, for instance, on the sloping 
sands, which are warm with the rays of the 
summer sun; the spent wave dies at my feet, 
and the pores of the sand quickly drink in its 
briny libation. And yonder a gleeful child 
plays along the shore, the soft cool waters 
gently lapping its chubby feet and white 
ankles. Then I walk out to meet the siren, 
and she clasps me gently by the knees, and 
by the waist, and by the shoulders, and I yield 
myself to the caressing touch, and, lying upon 
the surface, float lazily, looking up into the 
fathomless sea of air above me. And then, 
after but a little while, I glance around, and 
find that the treacherous sea-maiden has borne 
me away on her bosom, and that the familiar 
shore is fast receding. And with a sudden 
start I let my feet fall and try to touch the 
bottom, but there is no bottom. And then a 
sense of powerlessness comes over me, and I 
throw out my arms and breathe quickly, and 
take in a great gulp of the salty sea. And I 
realize that I am in the arms of a stronger 
than I, and that I must conquer, if at all, by 

86 



THE WIND 

nerve force; and so I take a great grip with 
my will, and set my teeth, and settle down to 
a contest of endurance; and then, little by 
little, the land approaches again, with the 
white sands and the green grass and the wav- 
ing trees, and then my foot catches the solid 
earth, and I know that this world is still my 
home, with another chance for me to act a 
little part in it. 

Here, it is the viewless air, through which 
I pass my hand and can find nothing. It 
seems an utter void, though which in the calm 
summer days the gaudy butterflies loiter 
in their devious flight, and the thistle- 
down sails with motionless fibers like an 
ethereal shuttlecock. But yonder, great oaks 
are bending before it, their branches clashing 
together, and here and there breaking and fall- 
ing to the ground or whirling away into the 
adjoining field. And as it rushes and riots 
about the house, spending its giant strength 
impotently upon the well-laid walls, I think 
sympathetically of those who go down unto 
the sea in ships, and thank my stars that I am 
not with them. And away goes my memory 
back to an evening in the Brooklyn Academy 
of Music, and Salvini is playing Lear, the old 
man buffeted by the tides of evil fortune, who 
will remain for all time as the type of those 
against whom ingratitude has done its worst, 
but still " every inch a king," who stands out 

87 



THE WIND 

in the storm and wreaks his impotent fury in 
bitter words: 

" Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow ! " 

And we follow the tragedy to the end, scarcely 
conscious of the polyglot feature of the per- 
formance. Was there ever a more pathetic 
picture than that with which it closed, as the 
great actor played it, the king mourning over 
the dead Cordelia, dead in the hour of her 
vindication? I trow not. 

" The wind bloweth where it listeth, and 
thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not 
tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth." 
But at length it has spent its fury, and as it 
subsides to a gentle murmur, still issuing from 
those distant hills, and the sun is setting, I am 
fain in thought at least to go to meet it, for I 
remember again that this is the wind of 
destiny; for 

" Thus departed Hiawatha, 
Hiawatha the beloved, 
In the glory of the sunset, 
In the purple mists of evening, 
To the regions of the homewind, 
Of the northwest wind, Keewaydin, 
To the Islands of the Blessed, 
To the kingdom of Ponemah, 
To the land of the Hereafter." 



VIII 
ROVER 

ROVER is an Irish setter, with long, 
soft brown hair, dark on the head 
and back and front of the legs, and 
"' verging on a straw color where it 
" feathers out " on the throat and belly and 
thighs and tail. He was an awkward puppy, 
six months old, when I obtained him a year 
and a half ago, from which fact you may be 
.able to compute his present age. At the inn 
where I was then staying he at once became a 
great favorite, spoiled by everyone about the 
place. I had a fancy that I should like to 
live with my dog, like the maidens in the story 
books, and so I took him to my room and had 
him eat and sleep by my bedside. But it did 
not work very well. His manners and habits 
were not first-rate, and then I sometimes had 
to go away and leave him for days at a time. 

I remember when first I took him out walk- 
ing with me. The ground was covered with 
snow and ice, upon which the poor fellow, 
loose-jointed and awkward at best, slipped 
and sprawled about in the most ridiculous 
fashion. And we went skating, — I was to do 

89 



ROVER 

the skating, and he was to be spectator and 
chorus, — and he performed his part to the life, 
getting plenty of exercise, and laughing at 
his own mishaps. 

He was a great baby, full of the joy of liv- 
ing, and overflowing with love for everybody. 
Plis pleasure lasted into his dreams, and it was 
great fun to watch him, when some particu- 
larly delightful fancy came across his mind, 
while he was asleep. The quirk about his 
lips, and the pounding of his tail upon the 
floor, gave unmistakable evidence of the happy 
vision which entertained him. 

Unfortunately, within a few weeks after I 
purchased him, he caught the distemper, and 
soon became a very sick dog indeed, coughing 
and moping, and generally miserable. I did 
not in the least know what to do for him, and 
had to write and telegraph for instructions 
and for medicine. He was removed to a 
warm room in the barn, where he could be 
conveniently cared for, leaving me more com- 
fortable in his absence, for my apartment was 
not fitted for a canine hospital. And then 
David Mapelson — you know David? — told 
me that I should give him " beef, iron, and 
wine," with which he said that he had success- 
fully treated several such cases. This I did, 
and thanks to this and other good treatment, he 
pulled through, not without permanent injury, 
however, which frequently manifests itself in 

90 



ROVER 

a sort of gasp or twitching. I am told, I 
know not how truly, that it is simply nervous- 
ness. Certain it is that it does not destroy 
his happiness, or deter him from active exercise. 

I am sorry to say that I neglected Rover, 
but he never bore malice or resented it, and 
would always show the utmost joy when I 
appeared. He would climb all over me at 
once in the most indiscriminate and uncom- 
fortable fashion, with a particular fancy for 
biting playfully at my feet and at the legs of 
my trousers. He and Shep (Shep is a shep- 
herd's dog living, also, at the inn) became 
great cronies; in fact, almost inseparable. 
The comrades would go away often, and be 
absent for hours together. 

When I moved into the cottage in February 
I left Rover at the inn, for I had made no 
preparations for his comfort. I had nothing 
for him to eat, and besides, I did not know 
quite what to do with him. Moreover, the 
cottage was infested with mice, for which 
reason I had secured the services of a kitten, 
one Titus Andronicus, of whom more here- 
after. Titus had been brought up, not " by 
hand," but in a barn — in fact, I 'spect he 
" just growed," and being of a very timid 
disposition — at least, in my presence — I feared 
to complicate the situation by introducing the 
canine element. But one day I thought it 
was time that Rover should become a per- 

91 



ROVER 

manent resident of his master's home, so I 
brought him up to the cottage, which he had 
not visited since its completion, and asked 
Hickory Ann to find him some provender, 
which she did. But, mindful of the fact that 
his best friend remained at the inn, and that 
he had there been accustomed to regale on 
roast turkey and other delicacies, whereas he 
could not here expect to live upon the fat of 
the land, I thought it best to tie him for a 
while to the railing of the porch, where he 
could have comfortable shelter. He seemed 
quite happy and contented there, and doubt- 
less made up for much loss of sleep in the past. 

The next day I let him run for a while. 
We were much pleased that he stayed around 
the house, and returned to us, after making a 
call upon my next neighbor. But later in the 
day he wandered off, and we saw him no more 
that day. 

I subsequently found that the ties of friend- 
ship had been too much for his fidelity to me. 
He had returned to Shep (who had done 
nothing but mope since his disappearance), 
and they were off somewhere as usual, per- 
ambulating the country together. Mine host 
at the inn had dark misgivings as to his ever 
remaining permanently with me after this re- 
lapse, but, what was worse than this, he had 
heard rumors of recently slaughtered sheep in 
towns to the northward. There was nothing 

92 



ROVER 

to connect the two friends with these dire 
rumors, and no reason to feel that they were 
responsible, but visions of portentous bills for 
mutton danced before our eyes. What could 
I do? It did not seem that I could keep the 
dog, and I could not give him away without 
a guaranty that he should be properly cared 
for. So, reluctantly, I gave instructions that 
he should be shot and decently interred. 

In the evening, as I was sitting writing in 
my study, I heard a light footfall, and a 
moment later who should appear but Rover, 
wet and bedraggled, but full of the joy of 
recognition — or of anticipation — which? I 
gave him the benefit of the doubt, and receiv- 
ing his moist embraces with as good a temper 
as possible, I led him out and tied him in the 
porch, where he was soon devouring as good a 
meal as Hickory Ann could furnish him on the 
spur of the moment. 

But this is where the fun came in. I had 
scarcely returned comfortably to my work 
when a series of barks near the edge of the 
wood caught my ear, and I went to the door 
just in time to see Shep gliding through the 
darkness toward the feasting Rover. This, 
then, was the dodge. No mutton to-day, but 
two hungry dogs, one of which had been sent 
forward to provide the repast, while the 
stranger waited unseen in the background. 

What shall I do with Rover ? 

93 



IX 
TITUS ANDRONICUS 

THAT'S the kitten— or cat— which 
is it? When does a kitten cease to 
be a kitten and become a cat? 
When does a boy cease to be a boy 
and become a man? I am afraid that it de- 
pends upon the boy — and the kitten. Some of 
us, probably, will never cease to be boys, and 
so with kittens. So with Titus. Even his 
name does not depress him. But then he is 
called " Tight " for short. 

Titus Andronicus is Maltese by descent, 
and emanated from a barn. I suppose it was 
a promotion to be taken from a barn to a 
house, but Titus did not think so, or, if he 
did, he must have been overcome by the 
grandeur of the cottage, for when the bag in 
which he had been brought up in the grocer's 
wagon was opened he took refuge under the 
sink and wholly refused to enter into com- 
munication with me. I had just moved in, 
and had no time for formalities, so I left him 
to his own devices and went on with my work 
arranging books at the other end of the house. 
An hour or two later, hearing a sudden rush, 

94 



TITUS ANDRONICUS 

I went to see what was the trouble, and there 
stood Titus, less than a yard away from his 
original post, with a mouse in his mouth. It 
appeared that the mouse did not understand 
the rationale of a cat (or kitten) sulking in 
that manner, and becoming tired of waiting 
for some movement, had gone to see what was 
the matter. 

It was some days after his arrival before it 
was thought best to give him a chance to leave 
the house. But one evening came an eclipse 
of the moon, and in the excitement of the 
moment the door was left open and Titus dis- 
appeared. Great was the lamentation, for his 
domestication had already advanced so far 
that occasionally, as a very great favor, he 
would permit himself to be touched. We 
feared that he had returned to the scenes of 
his childhood, and for two days we saw noth- 
ing of him. Then he reappeared, and con- 
veyed to Hickory Ann's mind a distinct im- 
pression that " he would not care if he took 
some milk." Of course so modest a request 
could not be gainsaid, and the beverage was 
provided. 

After it was absorbed Titus beamed all 
over. His tail stood up as if it were made to 
bear a signal pennant, and he walked around 
from chair to chair rubbing against the legs, 
and even sometimes ventured within the reach 
of his human acquaintances. A gentle smooth- 

95 



TITUS ANDRONICUS 

ing of the trousers' leg with the hand seemed 
to affect his nerves in a most surprising man- 
ner. He came nearer and nearer to me, lay 
down on the floor and drew himself along, 
rolled over and even permitted me to stroke 
him a little, especially to rub his ears. But 
when I attempted to take him upon my knees 
he was highly indignant. He made it quite 
clear that he was not that sort of a cat, and he 
has never receded from his attitude. 

For a little while after this first absence he 
occasionally disappeared for a day or two at 
a time, but he always returned with the de- 
meanor of one who felt that he had a right to 
his place. We discovered that he spent many 
hours under the porch and in the cellar, and 
had reason to believe that his time was not 
misemployed, for the mice, which had been 
numerous, gradually disappeared, not, how- 
ever, and alas! without serious and successful 
exploration having been made on two oc- 
casions to discover the source of a most fla- 
grant perfume. These post-mortem experi- 
ences were not to be desired. 

This serious work accomplished, Titus re- 
laxed somewhat in the severity of his manners 
and determined to enjoy his leisure. The 
birds around the cottage are very numerous, 
drawn thither in part by the grass seed thickly 
sown some time ago, but not covered, and 
waiting for the rain to give it a start. I fear 

96 



TITUS ANDRONICUS 

that Tight occasionally stalks this small game, 
and indeed I sometimes observe him stealthily 
creeping over the lawn. This is very wrong 
of him, but I have never seen him do any 
actual damage, and I am sure that he has not 
succeeded in driving the birds away. Chip- 
ping sparrows are my most numerous visitors, 
but I have one pair of beautiful indigo birds, 
together with catbirds and robins and various 
others; and the bobolinks are singing merrily 
around me all day, with the larks and the 
orioles and a lot more. But it is the kitten's 
great delight to lie basking on the warm dry 
earth, or upon the cellar door, and to roll over 
or sprawl out and invite me to stroke him if I 
appear in his neighborhood. He has quite a 
fancy for coming in to be stroked while I am 
at the tea-table, and to try each one of the legs 
of the chair in turn to find out which feels 
the most comfortable. 

It has been decreed that he shall spend his 
nights outside the house, and I am very apt to 
find him lying upon the door-mat when I step 
out at the end of the evening to see whether 
there is any prospect of rain. Or I hear some 
significant sound at the window by my desk, 
and looking up I see Titus upon the ledge 
outside, peering in and watching me at my 
work or catching moths as they flutter against 
the pane. And meantime he has grown older 
and bigger and a great deal smoother, and I 

97 



TITUS ANDRONICUS 

am afraid that if he should now encounter any 
of his old companions of the barn, he would 
express himself disdainfully. He would have 
to do it silently, however, for he has the most 
ridiculous little miau that ever you heard. 



98 



X 

RUMEX AND PLANTAGO 

SOME there are who despise the wild 
carrot, and some who cannot endure 
the daisy, which they persist in calling 
whiteweed, indignant that it should 
masquerade — this great, sturdy flaunting 
beauty — as the " wee, modest, crimson-tipped 
flower." And some, I trow, revile the butter 
and eggs, which sounds so appetizing and nu- 
tritious. The despisers of " pusley " are 
numberless, regardless of the fleshlike feeling 
of its stems and of the fact that, if the worst 
comes to the worst, the gardener can treat it 
as the barbarian does the missionary. 

But I, I have a mortal hatred of yellow 
dock and plantain. What vulgar proletarians 
so shameless as they? How, like Paul Pry, 
they hope they don't intrude, and then plant 
themselves in the path so that it is impossible 
to escape them. They precede you from the 
highway along your own lane, disdaining not 
to slink in the wheel-tracks or under the horses' 
hoofs, and multiply riotously by the doorstep 
wherever the footfall is not absolutely con- 
stant. In this situation Plantago is easily the 

99 

LofC. 



RUMEX AND PLANTAGO 

more obsequious. Like Uriah Heep, it is so 
'umble that no crouching can be too mean 
for it. 

Rumex, on the contrary, though when it 
will it can penetrate a crust of clay which 
seems almost like sheet-iron, is well content to 
luxuriate in the richest soil of the moist 
meadow, remote from wheel of wagon or foot 
of man or beast. Give it but a chance, and it 
will send its great tapering orange root far 
down toward the subsoil, and carry its head 
high in the air, crowned with a raceme bearing 
innumerable rusty seeds, which it will dis- 
tribute freely for the common use. 

My mountain meadow is covered with a 
carpet of the most wonderful green grass, the 
growth from last Autumn's sowing. Among 
the grass there are several million buttercups, 
to say nothing of the daisies and dandelions, 
which I shall not attempt to count. But I 
have a friendly feeling for these, and am quite 
ready to rejoice in their blossoming. I feel it 
a personal commendation when my neighbor 
tells me that the daisies make very good hay. 
But with the yellow dock it is war to the knife. 
Either it must go or I must go, and it is still 
an open question which. I mean to enforce 
cloture, but I have reached the point where I 
see that I cannot do this single-handed. 

How many thousands of these and of the 
plantains I have already disposed of I cannot 

ioo 



RUMEX AND PLANTAGO 

say. I start out in the morning armed with a 
sharp, long-handled weed-knife and circum- 
navigate the cottage, and I follow the drive- 
way out to the road, a distance of several hun- 
dred feet, seeking to discrown my enemies 
wherever seen. And then I retrace my steps, 
and behold, like Minerva sprung full-armed 
from the brain of Jove, they instantly plant 
themselves again in the pathway along which I 
have just marched in the role of a conqueror. 

Have they sprung into being since my pas- 
sage? Sometimes I think that they have. I 
know that they can appear with leaves several 
inches in length (I speak now of the Rumex 
— the yellow dock) within an interval of a 
very few hours. The leaves have probably 
been well developed under the surface, and 
suddenly a point is reached where they have 
strength and elasticity enough to throw off the 
superincumbent soil. But in most instances 
their appearance is merely another evidence of 
the inaccuracy of human observation. I 
looked, but I did not see. And so I am once 
more cautioned as to the weakness of the testi- 
mony of my senses, and can only console my- 
self with the reflection that, weak as the 
testimony is, it is the best that I have. 

Coarse and obtrusive and objectionable as 
Rumex is, I am sure that it does not cause me 
so much annoyance as Plantago. The very 
meek, groveling habit of this wretch is his 

IOI 



RUMEX AND PLANTAGO 

worst offense. All members of the genus 
Rumex are not equally offensive; the sorrels, 
for instance, overgenerous in offering their 
company as they are, do much to entertain by 
their contribution of color to the landscape. 
And there are degrees of baseness even in 
Plantago; but for the Major, who may be 
counted, as it were, the head of the family, he 
can best apologize for himself by a decorous 
silence. The most that can be said for him is 
that his petioles are sometimes beautiful in 
color, but these he keeps concealed. 



102 



XI 

— AND RHUS TOXICODEN- 
DRON 

A CRITIC tells me, " You have struck 
the bucolic philosopher's note, and it 
twangs acceptably, but why don't 
you make a chord of it? Really, 
yellow dock and plantain are hardly worth 
writing about unless you reason from them to 
humanity, or dogs or cats or sich." 

Now, of course, this is open to more than 
one construction. But what it seems most 
strongly to imply is, that I might point a 
moral and adorn my tale by designating cer- 
tain classes among those animals indicated in 
which the attributes named take on a graphic 
character, so that they lend themselves to 
picturesque description. This is the sophis- 
ticated citizen's view. The bucolic philos- 
opher, going meditatively upon his rounds, 
inhaling occasionally the sweet breath of kine, 
and seeing his own image reflected in their 
mild eyes, viewing the clouds softly floating 
in the summer sky, and the new leaves lightly 
waving in the breeze, irrigating his parched 
acres with the sweat of his brow, and eating 

103 



— AND RHUS TOX. 

with a hearty relish his " Spare feast, a radish 
and an egg," without the radish and with an 
extra egg thrown in to make good measure; 
the bucolic philosopher, I say, is content to 
reflect the picture, which he at the same 
moment absorbs, without making invidious 
comparisons. But the perverted citizen sees 
in these harmless manifestations of nature an 
admirable opportunity for the castigation of 
his fellow-creatures, bipedal and quadrupedal. 
Especially is he critical of his brother man* 
But what is the fact ? The other day I had a 
word to say about Rumex and Plantago — yel- 
low dock and plantain. That word had not 
reached the press, when, behold, along comes 
Homo rumex himself, in search of a job. A 
great, hulking, round-shouldered, long-legged, 
slab-sided boy, with slouched hat and rusty 
coat, looking almost as shabby as myself. 
And he, at a word, took arms against a sea of 
yellow docks, and, by opposing, ended them. 
That is, he ended a great many of them, inas- 
much as whereas two days ago I viewed with 
dismay the rank growth overtopping my beau- 
tiful green grass, I can now look complacently 
across the velvet slopes and feel sure that 
henceforth the field is mine. 

And what task, think you, did this knight 
paladin next accept? The "Mountain 
Meadow," with its border of ledge and wood- 
land, near the northerly end of which the 

104 



— AND RHUS TOX, 

cottage has been erected, contains about eight 
acres and is bounded upon one side (next the 
road) by an old rail fence standing upon the 
remnant of a ruined wall, and upon two other 
sides by loose and sprawling walls of trap and 
bowlders. Among these moss-grown stones, 
the Rhus toxicodendron — the poison ivy, 
poisOn oak, poison vine, or mercury, as it is 
here called — has intrenched itself, and each 
year, in the greatest profusion, it greets the 
advancing Spring with its delicate, juicy red 
triple leaflets, and each Autumn borders the 
field with a phylactery of crimson and scarlet 
and gold. Now it is said that the stars in 
their courses fought against Sisera, and when 
Mercury is in the ascendant I am obliged to 
avow myself one of the vanquished. It was 
not the wind that overcame the sturdy traveler, 
and it was a gnat or a black fly or a mosquito 
or something of that sort that conquered the 
king of beasts. He that has felt the irritation 
occasioned by the poison ivy does not covet a 
repetition of the affliction. I happen to be one 
of those subject to this influence, as many are, 
and a year ago I hired a worthy citizen, who 
vowed that he feared it not, to extirpate the 
vine, root and branch. He set to work 
valiantly, but the next day I noticed that he 
did not reappear, and, meeting him some time 
later, I discovered that he had succumbed to 
the malign influence, and thereafter his bash- 

105 



— AND RHUS TOX. 

fulness deterred him from attempting another 
interview. 

Now, the preux chevalier to whom I have 
referred, whom, at his coming, I thought to 
recognize as Homo rumex, has " tackled " 
this job, just as he has each of the others at 
which I have put him, with the single response, 
" All right, Sir," and since the middle of yes- 
terday afternoon (I do not mean to include 
the night) he has continued it with dogged 
persistence. He has not suffered, and does 
not think that he will. But whether he will 
or will not, he adheres to his undertaking with 
a constancy that ought to transfigure him, and, 
I am sure, must in time. I shall keep my 
eyes upon him, and expect one day to see a 
spiritual efflorescence manifesting itself. I am 
afraid that it will be indescribable when it 
comes, so you must not expect me to indicate 
it by courses and distances. 

But about that moral. I do not quite see 
how I can get it in now without letting my 
readers perceive that it is the moral. It ought 
to be so mixed up with the treacle that none 
could distinguish it, and, in fine, the compound 
should produce so excellent an impression that 
those who absorb it should one and all, like 
Oliver, cry for " more." 

There is Homo rumex, and there are also 
Homo plantago and Homo toxico. We 
know each and every one of them. For the 

1 06 



— AND RHUS TOX. 

species Canis and Felis — that is another story. 
" And sich." Here is opened a wide door. 
The world is all before me where to choose, 
and were you to follow me, I should lead you 
far afield. 

I think that Homo plantago is not largely 
represented in this country. There are speci- 
mens to be found from time to time, and they 
are nicely fitted for preservation — their 
nature well adapted them for pressing. The 
trouble with these, however, as with many 
other things that are easily handled, is that 
you do not care for them. 

The rough, coarse Homo rumex, however, 
grows freely in our soil. In fact, there is 
hardly one of our multifarious climates to 
which he does not seem to be fitted, and in his 
rank growth he jostles out of existence so many 
of the more delicate sort that one can hardly 
consider him as other than a common pest. 
And the worst of it is, perhaps, that he seeds 
so freely that, whereas the finer species scarcely 
and with difficulty hold their own in numbers, 
the rumex multiplies with great rapidity and 
is in danger of possessing the field, if the 
measures that I have here adopted, or some 
other " equally as good," are not soon applied. 

But what shall I say of Homo toxico? I 
think that he is not so much a rural product 
(we have an occasional specimen of the plan- 
tago and our fair share of the rumex) but the 

107 



— AND RHUS TOX. 

air of cities seems to suit him well. In New 
York, especially, he multiplies rapidly. The 
police have much to do with him, though they 
rarely collect the best specimens, but it has 
pained me to notice during the past year that 
he seems also to be well represented upon the 
police force. 

Of this species there are many varieties, and 
the most dangerous are not always those that 
are most generally recognized as such. There 
are some, and these the best known, whose 
poison seems mostly superficial in its effect. 
These are comparatively harmless; at all 
events they are easily recognizable, and can be 
guarded against. But there are others which 
grow less obtrusively, being almost wholly 
concealed among innocuous species, whose 
virus is much more subtle and insidious; some- 
times acting very slowly and not clearly per- 
ceptible until it has so far permeated the sys- 
tem as to be ineradicable. For these, only one 
treatment is of any value. They must be 
completely rooted out. 



108 



XII 

WISHES 

ALAS! for the vanity of human ex- 
/jk pectations! Johnson said "human 
y ^ wishes," but he was " away off," as 
the boys have it. How in the world 
are we to get along without the use of slang 
in this day and generation ? To be sure, some 
of us to whom it is not wholly familiar are 
likely to bring it in on inappropriate occasions, 
like the minister of a certain church, which 
shall be nameless, who a few years ago spoke 
from his pulpit of one who had " gone where 
the woodbine twineth." He meant well, and 
the expression is certainly poetical enough in 
form to be appropriate, and may now have 
become classical, but at the time and under the 
circumstances it was not deemed so by his 
hearers, and the use of it did not promote 
decorum in the church. But slang forms the 
small change in popular language, a sort of 
token currency, and often presents to the mind 
a picture, allegorical it may be, which attains 
distinctness at small cost. The temptation to 
use it is at times almost irresistible, and in 
fact its use is not infrequently, as in the 

109 



WISHES 

instance above referred to, quite uncon- 
scious. 

Alas! I say, for the vanity of human ex- 
pectations! Another victim has been sacri- 
ficed in the good cause of ridding the world of 
noxious elements, and as the propitiatory pile 
increases, my hopes of early success become 
more faint. My kinglet of the verdant mead, 
the pseudo Homo rumex, who valiantly at- 
tacked a doughty foe, and so quickly proved 
that he was a (very unassuming) prince in 
disguise, who for a time sustained his cause 
with pertinacity, was, I am sorry to be forced 
to say, subdued at last, and driven from the 
field, a vanquished hero. His bravery was in 
vain; the foul fiend — Rhus toxicodendron — 
" got him," and so are the mighty fallen. I 
am compelled to see myself as in a vision, 
calling upon my hardy neighbors one by one, 
and sending them forth to do battle with the 
dragon that lies waiting along my borders, 
only to behold them one by one prostrated 
before it, victims to its fiery breath. 

I have a standing controversy, good-humored 
it is true, with my neighbor, the Baroness, 
over the merits and demerits of dear old 
Mother Nature, into whose hands we have 
been delivered. She draws for me horrible 
pictures of the manner in which the old lady — 
I think she considers her a sort of harridan — 
roasts us and stews us, scarifies us and drowns 

no 



WISHES 

us by turns in purely malignant delight. And 
I, on the other hand, find her spreading for 
us velvet carpets all decked with flowers, cool- 
ing our brows with gentle zephyrs, wafting 
to us fragrant odors, whispering to us the 
sweetest melodies and harmonies, unfolding 
before us glorious visions in the upper air, such 
cloud-capp'd towers and gorgeous palaces and 
solemn temples as ne'er were based upon the 
solid earth, revealing to our inner eye 

" The light that never was on sea or land; 
The consecration, and the poet's dream." 

And so we go on our allotted paths, seeing 
ofttimes, it may be, the picture that is behind 
the retina, rather than that which is reflected 
upon it. 

" The vanity of human wishes." But are 
they indeed vain? I am disposed to contest 
the point. It is an old proverb, usually quoted 
in a somewhat contemptuous tone, " If wishes 
were horses, beggars would ride." But 
wishes are horses, and beggars — I suppose 
that we are all of us beggars in some sort — 
do ride upon them into all kinds of beautiful 
regions. It is true that sometimes, with loose 
or with taut rein, we may ride to the — but no, 
we never mention him. There are indeed 
labyrinthine paths of dalliance, through 
which these docile steeds may oft meander, 
which lead to Castle Dangerous and the dread 

in 



WISHES 

abode of Giant Despair. I suppose that we 
cannot travel by any conveyance without a 
certain risk of disaster, and that our accident 
policies will not always save us. Perhaps it 
may be necessary to have even our wishes put 
through a sort of civil-service examination 
before we intrust our welfare to their keeping. 
A competitive examination might be best, but 
I am inclined to think that in this instance a 
pass examination may serve. 

Where would modern civilization be if this 
great cavalcade had never started? I fear 
still in the limbo of nothingness. He that has 
no wish upon which to ride perhaps may fear 
no fall, but likewise he need anticipate no 
rise. How horribly dull and dispiriting is the 
even tenor of his way! In my brief time I 
have done something in the way of pedestrian- 
ism, and I remember well how upon a jaunt 
of half a dozen miles over a level Long Island 
plain, ever the same straight road stretching 
before me, ever the same flat fields to the right 
and to the left, ever the same low tree-covered 
hill in the distance, the spirit became relaxed 
and the muscles flabby, and the whole man 
wearied of the monotony. 

And then I remember another day's tramp 
from Northampton across the Berkshire Hills, 
and how the road climbed and fell, surmount- 
ing breezy hilltops, as those highways always 
do (for their builders do not seem to have 

112 



WISHES 

learned that the bale of a pot is no longer 
when it is lying down than when it is standing 
up), and dipping down into cool and shady- 
dells. And I remember that when I became 
an hungered in the middle of the day, I 
stopped at a wayside shop and bought some 
crackers. And those crackers! I knew just 
as surely that they were a remnant of the sup- 
plies brought over in the Mayflower as though 
some deponent had solemnly stated the fact to 
me " on information and belief." If the 
grinders had then been few, they would cer- 
tainly have ceased from their labors long be- 
fore nature had been so far restored as to be 
able to continue in as cheerful a spirit as that 
in which she had begun. 

And then Peru church was passed, and the 
place of the dividing of the waters, for tradi- 
tion had it that the rain that fell upon one 
side of the roof sought the sea by way of the 
winding Housatonic, and that which fell upon 
the other reached the same all-embracing recep- 
tacle upon the broad bosom of the Connecticut. 

And always there was a higher summit to 
which to aspire, or a deeper valley or shadier 
glen to explore, and the sun sank lower and 
lower, as Hinsdale and Dalton and Pittsfleld, 
in turn, fell behind, and had only just gone 
safely to rest when the hills of Lenox opened 
to receive me, still far from being either a 
physical or a spiritual wreck. 

113 



WISHES 

Yes, I can conscientiously speak a good 
word for the favorite charger upon which the 
world has ridden this many a day. He needs 
careful training, and la haute ecole is none too 
good for him. He can be taught all manner 
of gaits provided for in the menage, the 
piaffer, the traverse, the demivolte, but the 
great danger is that he will too naturally and 
constantly be found traveling terre-a-terre. 
Let him be well looked after, and let his rider 
always keep him well in hand (and nobody 
has any business upon a horse's back who is 
not ready to conform to these conditions), and 
a more kind, companionable, and serviceable 
steed is not to be found. 

The vanity of human wishes, indeed ! Ex- 
cept it be, as the preacher saith, that all is 
vanity, I would fain believe that it is that 
which men most ardently wish for that is often 
the saving element in their lives. 



114 



XIII 
THE MINERS 

WITH the thermometer at eighty- 
five in the shade, I find myself 
not in the shade but in the sun, 
too much absorbed in watching 
the busiest set of workmen I have recently 
seen to seek the inviting shelter close at hand. 
Fortunately, a gentle but constant breeze 
somewhat tempers the unseemly heat, and it 
is permitted, at this time in the afternoon and 
at this distance from the highway, to discard 
that outer garment which men most do affect 
in polite circles. 

As I think I have already stated, the 
veranda faces northwest, and its timbers are 
of rustic cedar. In front lies one of the 
loveliest valleys that lovely New England can 
show, now juicy green with the fresh summer 
foliage, tempered here and there with the 
golden yellow of innumerable buttercups. 
Birds in great numbers flit across from mo- 
ment to moment, and the air is full of their 
notes, the Baltimore orioles, the robins, and 
the bobolinks keeping up an untiring refrain 
from morning until night. The bobolink has 

115 



THE MINERS 

a bright and rather elaborate song, for which 
one cannot very readily find words. The 
oriole, according to one of my neighbors, says, 
"Philip, Philip, is your nest ready?" Last 
year it was, rather unseasonably, " Philip, 
Philip, are the chestnuts ripe? " 

Beyond the valley the distant hills, rising 
tier after tier, seem to float in the haze into 
which they finally fade away on the horizon. 
To the left lies the undulating mountain 
meadow stretching southward and westward 
to the old highway — a perfect sea of green and 
gold, which Madam Magnusson told me a 
few days ago was the very picture of an Ice- 
landic valley. I do not know what thought 
could be more comforting as I sit in the torrid 
heat with my back turned to Phoebus — not in 
any sense of disrespect, but partly that my 
broad hat may shade my paper and partly 
that I may the more comfortably watch my 
little band of miners. 

Perhaps you are curious to know who these 
may be. I have said that the timbers of the 
veranda are of rustic cedar. 

This morning, as I made my usual round to 
see how my vines, my rosebushes, and other 
ventures were progressing, I discovered the 
miners. Some days earlier I had noticed a 
sprinkling of sawdust, as I thought it, near the 
pier which supports the post on the west cor- 
ner, stupidly forgetting, as one will, that no 

1 1.6 



THE MINERS 

carpenter had worked there for several 
months. I now saw the actual artificers 
busily employed. Entering a crack where the 
trunk had, as it were, been folded together, a 
party of large black ants have taken pos- 
session, and, public holiday though it be, they 
are working with might and main, construct- 
ing what mysterious winding passages within 
I know not, and can only surmise. 

The crack had been widened slightly at the 
foot of the post, especially close to the floor, 
but not to a breadth of more than an eighth 
of an inch. Beginning at a point about three- 
quarters of an inch higher, it has been again 
widened for about an inch in height. Be- 
tween these openings it would appear that a 
floor has been left, but the work of excavation 
goes on upon both levels, though mainly upon 
the second. One after another the little 
workmen run out to the entrance with their 
mandibles full of sawdust, drop it in the outer 
passage, and return to the interior. Of course 
I cannot identify them, unmarked, and I do 
not know whether the same workers who are 
engaged in the transportation also do the 
excavating. But I know that, as the material 
accumulates at the entrance, from time to time 
a party come out and remove it therefrom. 
Of these some appear more conscientious and 
much better workmen than others. A few 
merely carry the material two or three inches 

117 



THE MINERS 

and then leave it lying upon the floor. So 
far as I have observed, all that do this are 
small, and therefore probably young. But the 
others know no half-way measures. Taking a 
good mouthful or armful — sometimes it seems 
both — they run out to the edge of the veranda, 
a distance of only about six inches, drop their 
load to the ground whence there is no danger 
of its return, and then go back for another 
cargo. While returning they occasionally 
notice the material scattered untidily by the 
others, and carefully remove it. 

When I revisited the scene of operations 
after my first observation, I found the boards 
quite clear, excepting at the entrance. I 
questioned Hickory Ann as to whether she had 
been sweeping there, and, finding that she had 
not, concluded that the busy little intruders 
had been doing it themselves. I was probably 
mistaken, however. The breeze had slightly 
changed its direction, and had, I think, per- 
formed this service for them. I imagine that 
the ants perceived this, for afterward, while 
I watched, they appeared to place considerable 
reliance upon this sort of aid in the disposal 
of their debris. 

Hickory Ann proposes to rout the invaders 
with a pitcher of hot water, at which I am 
horrified. Of what account is the security of 
the cottage when compared with that of such 
an industrious family? 

118 



THE MINERS 

POSTSCRIPTUM 

Perhaps the hard-headed common sense of 
Hickory Ann's suggestion should have been 
regarded, after all. Certain it is that the 
black warriors now march and countermarch 
over the veranda floor; they have invaded the 
keeping-room; they cast longing eyes on the 
sugar-bowl; they have climbed the golden 
stairs and intruded into the halls of repose. It 
is true that I do not " reckon up by dozens " 
the advancing host, but only here and there 
meet solitary adventurers — free-lances in ap- 
pearance — and these are at once tried by 
drumhead court martial, with the usual re- 
sult: they meet a spy's fate, and are mercilessly 
executed. But how do I know that they are 
not acting systematically under sealed orders, 
that a lodgment has not already been effected 
in the very heart of my citadel — not merely an 
outpost captured — and that the day is not 
already named for my deposition? 



119 



XIV 
COMIN' THRO' THE RYE 

YOU should have seen them — don't 
you wish that you had ? There was 
Phollis of course, — ba§ fcerfteljt $$, 
cela va sans dire, — but where was 
Phillis? And there was Iolanthe, — it was 
her party; and there too were Arabella 
and Araminta, and Nicolette, Guinevere, 
Elaine, Bonnie Lesly, St. Cecilia, Airy-fairy 
Lilian, Lady Psyche, Cinderella, Andromeda, 
Galatea, Atalanta, and Briinhilde, and a 
dozen others, all trigged out as, if Kate Green- 
away, or Walter Crane, or somebody else 
" equally as good " had been their tiring 
servant. And it wasn't rye at all, only good 
honest grass in which they waded up to their 
waists. For the sun was just hiding in the 
clouds before it should sink behind the western 
mountains, and the path had lost itself among 
the tall stems which conspired to hide it. 
And so with dulcimer and sackbut and 
psaltery and harp, in broken lines they madtf 
their way amid the thick greenery over the 
gentle slopes which lie between the highway 

1 20 



COMIN' THRO' THE RYE 

and the cottage, and I thought that I had 
never in my life seen a fairer sight. 

Even though one may have fallen into the 
sere and yellow leaf, or perchance may have 
gone still farther, so that all the branches are 
gray and bare, and naught appears to the eye 
but chill and hoary winter, yet it is sometimes 
warm under the snow, and there may even 
there be a throb responsive to the pulses which 
still beat in the upper air, where the sun shines 
and the birds sing. 

'■ Now came still evening on, and twilight gray 
Had in her sober livery all things clad." 

1 he rainbow hues of sunset did not tint the 
curtains of night for the little fete; but shad- 
ows crept softly over the hills and settled 
down upon the verdant slopes. It was the 
month of roses, and the sun had poured itself 
into the blossoms and into the berries, until 
they fairly filled the air with their sweetness. 

My guests swarmed through the rooms and 
out upon the loggia; and some strayed to the 
place where the little chickens said peep ! peep ! 
and some went down by the pools where the 
frogs sang ditto. And then as the darkness 
gathered, they all settled upon the veranda 
rail and upon the steps and upon the floor in 
groups which brought sunlight into the 
shadows of night, and merry laughter alter- 
nated with vibrating strings and choral song. 

121 



COMIN'THRO'THERYE 

And I am sure that the scribe was not the only 
one who regretted it, when the curfew 
sounded, and in a rambling line these bright- 
hued birds of passage disappeared in the dark- 
ness. 



122 



XV 
KICKING AS A FINE ART 

DID you eve- see a hay tedder at 
work? It is really the most ridic- 
ulous-looking of modern agricul- 
tural machines, but it " does the 
business." If you have not seen it, you are to 
imagine a grasshopper made of wood and iron, 
and withal a sidewheeler. The farmer or the 
farmer's man hitches his horses to this affair, 
and, mounting into a comfortable seat atop, 
gravely drives to and fro over the hay field, 
with the machine's ungainly legs kicking out 
behind him, and tossing into the air the new- 
mown hay. I challenge you to make your 
first observation of the performance with a 
sober countenance. It will be as difficult as 
it was for the members of the whistling class 
to begin their exercises properly when they 
heard the injunction, " Prepare to pucker." 

But you will not have watched the opera- 
tion many minutes ere you will be filled with 
admiration at its effectiveness, and disposed to 
give due meed of praise to the man who thus 
so ingeniously utilized the gentle art of kick- 
ing. To be sure, it is not so picturesque a 

123 



KICKING AS A FINE ART 

sight as the old-fashioned one of a party of 
men and boys and girls going through the field 
with pitchforks, and spreading the hay with 
these, but it is much less exhausting, and 
then, in that prosaic ride, what dreams may 
come! 

In our little village we have just had a 
sample of kicking of another sort, but as bril- 
liantly successful. Perhaps I have before re- 
marked that this is one of the most beautiful 
villages in New England : not a village out of 
a bandbox, combed and brushed and set in 
order every morning, and with no sprig of 
clematis or branch of wild rose ever permitted 
to wander from its place, but a real old-fash- 
ioned New England village, with its tree- 
shaded streets and its grassy banks, on which 
the daisies dare to grow, with here and there a 
spick-and-span lawn, with dark evergreens and 
drooping shrubbery and carefully groomed 
footpaths. 

The village lies upon a side hill. As I 
have elsewhere remarked, its Main Street is 
nearly a mile in length, quite narrow, and 
with the houses upon one side in many places 
considerably higher than those upon the other, 
the one side being usually raised upon a bank, 
the other lower than the level of the roadway. 
At some distance on either side is another 
street, running nearly parallel, one of them, 
however, for but a short distance; and there 

124 



KICKING AS A FINE ART 

are several lanes crossing from the Main 
Street to the " New Street,"* nearer the river. 
Our famous school occupies a number of old 
dwellings, scattered along on either side of 
Main Street, and other buildings upon the 
road which mounts the hill toward Under- 
ledge. 

A year ago the new monster — the " trol- 
ley " — made its appearance in our neighbor- 
hood, and with many misgivings we permitted 
it to pass along our northern border on its 
way to a neighboring manufacturing village, 
which is situated within the limits of the same 
town, and which, like the Old Man of the Sea, 
we are unable to shake off. Our interests are 
diverse and we are unequally yoked together. 
We wish a divorce a vinculo matrimonii, but 
our affectionate partner does not desire it, and 
there we rest. 

Well, ever since the iron rails were laid we 
have had rumors that an effort was to be made 
to run a branch line down through our Main 
Street, for the purpose of connecting with 
towns to the southwest of us. No such state- 
ments have been made by those representing 
the railway company to those who were op- 
posed to such a movement ; indeed, the charter 
was obtained in the form in which it stands 
upon the distinct pledge that no effort was to 
be made to use that route. But there are a 
few persons upon the street, and others in the 

125 



KICKING AS A FINE ART 

village, who, for reasons best known to them- 
selves, and which they variously express, desire 
that that route should be used, and no other, 
and these have been assured that they should 
not be disappointed. 

At present the decision as to the route rests 
with the Selectmen, and we have reason to 
believe that a majority, at least, of the present 
Selectmen realize the absurdity — nay, the 
criminality — of building a trolley line along 
the Main Street. Their term, however, ex- 
pires in the coming October. 

Being fully aware of the principle which led 
many good people to be willing to send all 
their brothers-in-law to the war, and feeling 
satisfied that we could not rely implicitly upon 
the altruistic sentiment controlling the votes 
of our good neighbors in Unionville, ten days 
ago we drafted a bill exempting one mile of 
the Main Street of Farmington from use for 
trolley purposes, and placed the same in the 
hands of the legislative Joint Committee on 
Railroads, which appointed a hearing on Tues- 
day of last week, and another on the following 
day. Our people were fully aroused, and men 
and women alike, married and single, doctors, 
and mechanics, and farmers, and what not, to 
the extent of two or three score, who had 
never before taken part in such a proceeding, 
appeared at the Capitol and testified to the 
faith that was in them. A very large majority 

126 



KICKING AS A FINE ART 

of the residents and of the property upon the 
Main Street were represented, and many ap- 
peared for other parts of the village. 

Competent counsel spoke for us, but it was 
the plain words of the plain people upon which 
we relied. We were doubtless aided by the 
ludicrous exhibition made upon the other side, 
and by attacks directed at a certain scribbling 
settler of recent date for trying to deprive old 
residents of their privileges. However that 
may be, the committee volunteered to inspect 
the ground in person, and did so thoroughly, 
under the guidance of those representing both 
sides, and then reported the bill unanimously. 
It was passed the same day by the Senate with- 
out opposition, and the following day by the 
House by a vote of 130 to 30, and we felt 
that we had won the battle. 

But eternal vigilance is the price of liberty 
(I believe that I have heard some such re- 
mark), and, though our Legislature meets 
only biennially, we are quite prepared for an 
effort to reverse the action just taken and to 
repeal the bill. We have learned to act to- 
gether, however, and we do not intend to lose 
the advantage of position which we have 
gained. 

Is it not about time that other communities 
realized that they have some rights that are 
worth protecting? that it takes a very brief 
period to destroy charms which it has taken 

127 



KICKING AS A FINE ART 

generations to confer? and that certain kinds 
of damage, once effected, can never be re- 
paired ? Let us have a revival of public spirit 
in these matters, and be ready to challenge 
every attempt on the part of money-making 
corporations to trample upon private rights, 
and to destroy natural beauty, until it is con- 
clusively shown that what is demanded is 
strictly in the public interest, and that the 
advantage desired cannot be attained in any 
other way. 

The new electric-railway system is a great 
convenience, and it is to be hoped that it may 
prove of great practical utility. But there are 
good ways and bad ways of doing a good 
thing, and it is to be remembered that dignity 
and beauty are of value as well as cheapness 
and speed, and that the integrity of private 
rights is the first essential to every member of 
the community, be he poor or be he rich. 
While private comfort must yield to public 
necessity when the necessity is shown, it is 
always safe to ask in any particular case 
whether that which masquerades under the 
garb of public necessity be not in fact private 
greed. 

Our highways have been constructed at a 
great expense to the public, for the public use. 
When a private corporation asks the right to 
appropriate them for the purpose of making 
money, it is the first duty of sensible citizens to 

128 



KICKING AS A FINE ART 

inquire whether this right can be given with- 
out serious inconvenience to the dwellers 
thereon, and to the public for whom the high- 
ways were constructed, and next whether 
there is no other method or route by which 
what is needed may be accomplished without 
the inconvenience or damage sure to be en- 
tailed by the course proposed. 

Do I hear someone saying, " Avast such 
sordid details of humdrum vulgar affairs: 
what have trolley railway corporations and 
legislative committees to do with literature? 
Let us hear of robber barons, and of knights 
errant, and of tall and slender and graceful 
maidens, and of their release from the clutch 
of horrible dragons." Well, the point seems 
to be aptly made and yet I am not quite sure. 
I wonder whether in the actual occurrence the 
descent of the robber baron upon the peaceful 
village, and the laying waste of homes, and the 
destruction of familiar objects, for the personal 
profit of the marauder, w T ere any less prosaic to 
the sufferers at the time, or any more attract- 
ive in their consequences, than the banding 
together of men into corporate bodies for the 
purpose of attaining certain profitable ends, 
regardless of the individual rights which must 
first be trampled upon, of the destruction of 
the privacy of their victims, of their convenient 
access to their homes, of cherished beauty of 
surroundings which has required hundreds of 

129 



KICKING AS A FINE ART 

years of loving care to develop and protect? 
Or whether the old-time appeal of the vil- 
lagers of the overlord for defense against the 
rapacity of the pillagers was any more heroic 
or poetic, in fact, than its modern equivalent 
of an appeal to the legislature against the 
brigands of this time, whose nefarious enter- 
prises are frequently carried through under 
color of statute law? Were the wives and 
maidens of old more worth saving than the 
wives and maidens of to-day who sought for 
deliverance according to my story? Or is 
there anything more poetic in a monster with 
glaring eyes, and huge jaws and teeth, and 
sharp claws, and slippery scales, than in a 
corporation bearing the explicit or implied 
authority of the State through a skillfully 
devised charter, by which the rights of the 
many can be manipulated so as to promote the 
advantage of the few? 

Picturesqueness seems to follow ruin, and 
I suppose that the accent of age is requisite to 
touch with romance the struggles of to-day. 
But age draws on apace, and one day even the 
things of the present will be old. This record 
will then be buried in oblivion, but not, let us 
trust, the freedom and the beauty for which 
man are struggling to-day, as they struggled in 
the times that are past. 

" Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are 
true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever 

130 



KICKING AS A FINE ART 

things are just, whatsoever things are pure, 
whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever 
things are of good report: if there be any vir- 
tue, and if there be any praise, think on these 
things." 



131 



XVI 

PROVE ALL THINGS; HOLD 
FAST THAT WHICH IS 
GOOD 

THE man or woman who carelessly 
or unnecessarily destroys natural 
beauty is still a barbarian, whatever 
be the nationality, social position, or 
wealth of which he or she may boast. It is 
time that the American people should wake up 
to a realization of this. 

It is true that we are still very young. As 
a people we are only about three hundred years 
old and as a nation we are little more than 
one hundred, but it would seem that even the 
short period of three hundred years might be 
sufficient in which to overcome the rawness of 
youth, to acquire some appreciation of the 
beautiful as well as the showy or useful, some 
knowledge of and love for the refinements of 
life, some perception of the fact that w T hile 
that which is the work of fine art is good, that 
which comes first-hand from the supernal 
powers is sometimes good also. 

" Even that art which you say adds to nature, 
Is an art that nature makes." 

132 



PROVE ALL THINGS 

And you may safely trust her to do many 
things nobly without your intervention. 

The American people are a " hustling " 
people. Now hustling is a good thing in its 
place, provided that even in that place you 
cannot have a better, but it is a very bad thing 
when out of place. One of the most beauti- 
ful objects that is ever seen is a soap bubble, 
but a soap bubble cannot be made by hustling. 
Yet hustling can very quickly destroy it. A 
noble elm may take a hundred years to build, a 
noble oak five hundred, but a hustler can 
destroy either of them in a day. A roadside 
left to the care of the rain and the wind and 
the sun, with the birds for planters, may take 
on a grace and beauty of form and color which 
will soothe a wounded spirit and bring balm to 
an aching heart, but a road " mender," or a 
farmer with a taste for " tidying up," can 
make a hot and barren waste of it in an hour. 
A shady glen between climbing hills seems the 
very haunt of coolness and repose, and as you 
look upon it you would fain lie at length upon 
its side and let the soft air bring freshness to 
your tired brow. But the desire is not so 
strong after it has been made a dumping place 
for clam shells and tomato cans, scraps of 
paper and old junk. 

And, coming to those things to which the 
hand and mind and heart of man have directly 
contributed, it may be remarked that a new 

133 



PROVE ALL THINGS 

dwelling is fresh and clean and comfortable. 
But it is not until many hearts have beaten in 
it, until many lives have aided to make it a 
whispering gallery, until the tooth of time 
has lightly gnawed the sharp corners of its 
timbers, its brick and its stone, until the ele- 
ments have softly tinted it, that it has become 
a home in the fullest sense, and sacred with the 
sacredness which comes from close association 
with human lives and assimilation to the 
humor of passing years. And then comes the 
time to lay the restraining hand upon the arm 
of the hustler ere he play the part of a destroy- 
ing fiend in the name of modern progress. 

It is not infrequently that the soundest 
philosophy is suggested in' a nursery rhyme. 
It was long ago that we learned that as, idly, 

" Humpty-Dumpty sat on a wall 
Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall. " 

And it may well be remembered that 

" All the King's horses and all the King's men 
Couldn't put Humpty-Dumpty up again." 

It was recently remarked, by one who felt 
deeply upon these matters, that the time had 
fully arrived for the pulpit to take up the sub- 
ject and proclaim it the sin that it is, willfully 
to destroy the natural beauty to which we 
have become heirs. The pulpit could engage 
in a very much worse work than this ; it would 

134 



PROVE ALL THINGS 

be safe to say that it often has engaged in very 
much worse work. 

Fortunately, so beneficent is Nature, so long- 
suffering and lenient to the criminal, however 
he may treat her, that the hustler never can do 
damage so great that she is not able in time 
to throw a veil over it and soften its terrors. 
But there are some things which nature cannot 
do, some rents which are beyond repair, and 
eternal vigilance is called for on the part of 
the civilized, lest these rents be made before he 
is aware. 

The organization of village improvement 
societies was a move in the right direction, but 
the work of these has been allowed in many 
places to become perfunctory and inefficient. 
They might well be spurred to greater activity 
by the dangers now threatening because of the 
cupidity of some, or of the barbarism of 
others; and it should be a part of their 
function to seek to disseminate sound views 
upon the duty of the citizen in regard to 
natural beauty. 



135 



XVII 
OPEN SESAME 

THE following item has made its ap- 
pearance in the public prints, pur- 
porting to have been copied from a 
notice put up on the grounds of 
a well-known public man: "You are wel- 
come. Build no fires, bring no guns, and pull 
up no flowers by the roots." 

As the saying has it, " Si non e vero, e ben 
trovato." If not true, it ought to be true 
(though that isn't a literal translation), and 
the only possible reason for mooting the point 
is that it is so perfectly sensible and civilized. 
The text is a most inviting one and I am 
tempted to take it up after the fashion of an 
old-time preacher, with firstly, secondly, 
thirdly, and fourthly, and an " improvement " 
upon the text as a whole as a snapper. Or to 
take it after the fashion of a conundrum, as: 
My first is a benediction; my second is anti- 
phlogiston; my third is bird protection; my 
fourth is a wise suggestion, and my whole is 
downright common sense. 

When a man lives in the city or even in the 
immediate suburbs, upon a little seven-by- 

136 



OPEN SESAME 

nine lot, it is not to be supposed that He has 
more than enough room to accommodate his 
personal friends. And it may be necessary to 
warn these to " please keep off the grass." 
But when he lives by the seashore, or on the 
mountains, or even in the plain country, and 
owns or rents a part of all outdoors, it is quite 
another matter. Not that his house is not his 
castle there, just as it is in the city. Not that 
he can properly be cheated of his privacy there 
any more than in the city. And not that he is 
not entitled to supreme control there, subject 
to the laws of the state, just as he is in the city. 
But granting all these qualifications, the motto 
noblesse oblige requires of him that he as the 
owner, renter, or controller should extend to 
those of his fellow citizens who are themselves 
civilized and respecters of his rights, all 
privileges that he can safely afford without 
depriving himself and his family of the ad- 
vantages to which they are entitled. 

The land-hunger is probably one of the 
most intense cravings known to human nature, 
and the private ownership of land has been one 
of the most potent forces in the advancement 
of civilization. It is not probable that within 
the next few thousand years we shall reach a 
period when any very serious change will take 
place in this respect in regard to desire or right 
of ownership. But precisely because such is 
the case and because some have and others have 

137 



OPEN SESAME 

not, it is all the more incumbent upon those 
that have to act generously their part. 

We probably do not need any law about it ; 
we have too many laws already. You cannot 
very well reform the world by law, though 
you may thereby do away with obstacles and 
remove some special and unfair privileges. 
The experience of the past now and then 
struck out some very happy thoughts, and 
" Do as you would be done by " is not the least 
valuable of these. Has it ever occurred to 
you to consider what would be the total effect 
upon a community of a general effort to live 
up to the meaning of this injunction? 

I should like to pass a twelvemonth in 
such a community and observe what should 
occur. 

There are parts of our sea coast where it is 
already impossible for the person who is not a 
landowner to obtain a sight of the mighty 
main. There are extensive districts inland, 
where the wanderer or even the near neighbor 
is confined to a dusty road and wholly ex- 
cluded from the enjoyment of the finest 
samples of the handiwork of that miracle- 
worker, Nature. This ought not so to be. 
In older countries, in addition to the fact that 
great houses and fine parks are, under certain 
regulations, thrown open for the enjoyment of 
the public, there are almost everywhere foot- 
paths across private domains to which the 

138 



OPEN SESAME 

public has prescriptive rights, and from the use 
of which it can, therefore, never be debarred. 
Such paths might in most instances be allowed 
here, without interference with the comfort of 
the proprietors. 

Of course this is a matter of use and not of 
abuse. It remaineth that they that use this 
world be not as abusing it. If one cannot 
avail himself properly of privileges, he must 
be excluded from their enjoyment. But it is 
most often from lack of experience that abuse 
creeps in, and I venture to think that a 
prudent extension of a courteous hospitality 
would be followed by a rapid development of 
grateful and thoughtful recognition. 

What right, what moral right I mean, not 
legal right, has any individual to take posses- 
sion of one of those wondrously lovely spots 
which Nature with such a lavish hand has 
scattered over this beautiful world, and seal it 
up from the enjoyment of others? I might go 
further and say, by what right shall he so seal 
up a wonderful work of art? but I forbear. 
Remember, again, I am not speaking of legal 
right ; I am speaking of right as it is to appear 
to the conscience of the wholly civilized man, 
one who has scraped off his war paint, and 
prepared himself to become a citizen of that 
kingdom of which we hear so much, but which 
has curiously enough been left to the preachers 
to talk about, and is supposed to be a part of 

139 



OPEN SESAME 

the apparatus of Sunday morning, but which 
some eccentric people, who may not often be 
seen in the churches, fancy to be the most 
practical kingdom that exists, I mean the 
kingdom of God. 



140 



XVIII 

AM I MY BROTHER'S 
KfiEPER? 

THE sentiment most generally rec- 
ognized as elevated and ennobling, 
and characteristic of the best spirits 
in the community, is the sentiment 
that we are in some sort our brother's keeper. 
That there are certain imperative laws of de- 
velopment to which we, alike with all other 
departments of organic life, are subject, I 
make no question. That it is easy to attempt 
unwisely to interfere with the action of these 
laws, I am as fully assured. But that the 
human being of to-day has also a deliberate 
duty to perform, which can only be deduced 
from his own experience and the experience of 
the race so far as he is acquainted with it, I 
am quite as confident. 

The cry of the time, as it has been to some 
extent the cry of other times, is a leveling 
cry: a demand that the individual be brought 
beneath the heel of the multitude. Nothing, 
in my judgment, could be more unfortunate; 
there is nothing the success of which would 
seem to me more disastrous. The nugget of 

141 



MY BROTHER'S KEEPER? 

truth upon which this cry is based is, at its 
best, the assumption that there must be some 
fact of duty to correspond with the sentiment 
of helpfulness to which I have referred. I 
believe that there is such a fact; but in my 
judgment the deductions drawn therefrom are 
false, the theories thereon founded are un- 
tenable, and the practices proposed would be 
futile, and destructive of that for the support 
of which they are sought. 

Our knowledge is but an accumulation of 
facts and deductions drawn from experience. 
We know that progress has been attained 
through individual initiative, not through com- 
pulsory associated action. We know as well 
that the flower of progress, if we may not 
indeed more properly say its fruit, is the sense 
of this duty of common helpfulness. That is, 
human history points to voluntary and indi- 
vidual action as the source from which general 
progress arises, and the implement through the 
use of which it is effected, and from which the 
altruistic sentiment is born, not to compulsory 
and corporate action. Its ideal is wise and 
cheerful co-operation, as diametrically opposed 
to enforced and tyrannical communism, na- 
tionalism, socialism. 

Now we are in the midst of the struggle for 
the mastery between these two theories. 
While some think that we are approaching 
nearer and nearer to the actual trial of the 

142 



MY BROTHER'S KEEPER? 

socialist experiment, others believe that the 
whole movement is based upon certain tem- 
porary business or political conditions, and 
that in a comparatively brief period it will 
sink into insignificance. Whether the experi- 
ment will be tried on any large scale, I do not 
know: that the movement will soon fade 
away, I greatly doubt. All the elements of 
the situation seem to me to point to a period 
of unrest, lasting many years. It will take 
long to assimilate the changes in our material 
conditions that have already been effected: it 
is not impossible that, within the years just at 
hand, we shall have to face others as momen- 
tous. Should this be the case, undoubtedly all 
manner of social nostrums will be offered to 
us, and the wildest schemes will be attempted. 
If this be probably so, which is the wiser — 
to attempt to educate the uninstructed, or to 
simply stand on the defensive, as those who 
have, and defy the attack? (Some of us who 
feel thus, alas! have very little, excepting our 
sense of right, of justice and expediency.) 
According to my view, it is much the wiser to 
do what we can to open the eyes that are blind. 
It may be — it doubtless will be — slow work: it 
may require line upon line, precept upon 
precept, here a little and there a little. Even 
so but little may be effected in changing the 
attitude of those already committed. But it 
must be remembered that the vast majority 

H3 



MY BROTHER'S KEEPER? 

are not committed, but are simply ignorant, 
and that ignorance is the hotbed in which 
errors grow. A little truth will often go a 
great way in preventing the development of 
much falsehood. 

Supposing that my position is well taken, I 
think that I may safely follow with the asser- 
tion that the only wise way of meeting a 
dangerous and delusive movement, like that to 
which I am referring, is with a statement and 
enforcement of the exact truth, as you appre- 
hend it, not attempting to gloze over any 
point which may seemingly fit into the theory 
of your opponent, or to evade allusion to it, 
but rather emphasizing it in its true relations. 
So far as your opponents are reasonable, you 
thus place before them material through the 
use of which they may revise their conclusions ; 
and so far as your arguments may come before 
those who are merely unfamiliar with the 
question, and not yet your opponents, if you 
have faith in the power of the truth, you should 
be quite content to leave them to draw their 
own conclusions. I thoroughly believe that 
there exists a responsibility of ownership which 
is not adequately realized, and that this needs 
to be clearly set before those whom it most 
nearly touches. On the other hand, the 
maddest propositions are gravely advocated by 
writers who should know better, and eagerly 
accepted by readers who also should know 

144 



MY BROTHER'S KEEPER? 

better, but who never will know better unless 
some effort be made to place the truth before 
them by those who recognize the fact that they 
are, as I have said, in a certain sense, and so 
far as their power to aid may go, their 
brother's keeper. Let us take our stand upon 
the immutable laws of progress and the im- 
pregnability of the truth ; be not swerved from 
our conviction of the solidarity of the race, and 
that its welfare is bound up with and is at one 
with the eternal universe, if the universe be 
eternal, and if it be not, with whatever may be 
the eternal, and " God save the right." 



145 



XIX 

IN THE HEART OF THE 
STORM 

UNDERLEDGE forms an ideal point 
of vantage from which to watch the 
progress of a summer or a winter 
storm. You will remember that on 
the south, southwest, and west, the view is 
bordered by the edge of the mountain meadow, 
with a picturesque fringe of trees far enough 
away to give a good view of the sky, and with 
here and there a loophole through which one 
can just catch sight of the hills toward Forest- 
ville : in front, over a sloping line of maples on 
the High Street, which are ideally beautiful in 
the autumn, there are tiny glimpses of the val- 
ley, and beyond these of the narrow passage 
through which the Tunxis makes its way from 
the rugged country about New Hartford, and 
still further, the Burlington Mountain and the 
higher hills receding toward " Satan's King- 
dom " ; while to the northward, seen over the 
picturesque pasture and charming grassy 
slopes, stretches the beautiful intervale, with 
its bits of rich farming land, and long and 
broad masses of what seems interminable 

146 



HEART OF THE STORM 

forest to the Barn-door Hills, the portal of the 
valley, through which, when the atmosphere is 
clear, as now, we look far beyond to the moun- 
tains of central Massachusetts. 

Somewhat farther to the eastward the bold 
slopes of the Talcott Range front the wester- 
ing sun, breaking down into lesser hills, toward 
the Paul Spring; and behind the cottage only, 
the ledge with its rich drapery of evergreen 
and oak and ash and chestnut, through which 
the sky gleams in infinitesimal patches, closes 
the view, eighty or a hundred yards away. 

On Saturday it rained. It rained, and then 
again it rained. It poured. It came in floods, 
it lightened, and it thundered. Oh, how it 
thundered ! It so happened that about noon I 
was sitting upon the veranda, writing, — not 
an uncommon occurrence, — and for my own 
amusement I noted in careful detail the ap- 
pearance of the landscape under the existing 
and constantly changing atmospheric condi- 
tions. 

The weather during the morning had been 
"open and shut," which proverbially forebodes 
rain, and it has the further advantage that it is 
provocative of some of the most lovely effects 
that Dame Nature ever vouchsafes. At times 
the distant hills lose themselves in the pale 
blue haze, which advances well into the fore- 
ground. So was it that morning. I noticed 
a curious circumstance, however, which I am 

147 



HEART OF THE STORM 

quite unable to explain or understand. In the 
middle distance, perhaps eight miles away, 
against a background of dark green wood, 
stands the great house of my dainty little 
English neighbor near Weatogue. It is 
usually quite visible when the air is clear, 
especially while the sun is in the south, but I 
never before saw it so clearly as on Saturday. 
It shone as if it had just been presented with a 
fresh summer suit. That this should have 
been the case under the hazy condition of the 
atmosphere is singular. 

The changes in such weather as this are 
kaleidoscopic. A ray of sunlight passes athwart 
the valley, lighting here and there a farm- 
house, a bit of fertile meadow, a noble tree. 
Now the valley and nearer hills lie shrouded, 
and through the haze the sun-lighted heights 
on the horizon gleam softly like the Delecta- 
ble Mountains of a different world. Anon the 
haze lifts and the sun is veiled by a great dark 
cloud overspreading the west: the horizon 
line comes out clear and strong, the hills are 
of an intense blue against the lighter tone of 
the clouded sky. 

The great dark cloud rises and spreads. I 
watch heavy showers chasing one after another 
along Burlington Mountain and across the 
gorge at Unionville and by Avon and Sims- 
bury and around the bold headland of the 
Talcott Mountain. Occasionally a bit of 

148 



HEART OF THE STORM 

vapory fringe trails across our slope, leaves us 
a few pearly drops, and then climbs the heights 
beyond. 

This lasted well through the afternoon. 
The prolific mother of storms sat still in the 
west and sent out her brood one by one, flash- 
ing and grumbling and occasionally uttering a 
harsher note, but following each the beaten 
track up through the valley. Sometimes the 
first note of the thunder sounded nearly in 
front, and then, reverberating from cloud to 
cloud, it would roll far up the valley and die 
in the distance after lasting nearly or quite 
half a minute, which is a long time when you 
come to measure it.. 

In attempting to describe them in detail, I 
found the changes so sudden and frequent 
that, rapid writer as I am, it was impossible 
for me to keep up with them. It was ap- 
proaching five o'clock in the afternoon when 
the serious business began. Another scion of 
the same family made its appearance in the 
west, of more robust port and sterner visage. 
Its motion was steady and rapid, and instead 
of following the others northward through the 
valley, it marched steadily across and seemed 
to be coming on the wings of a violent wind. 

The veil grew thicker and thicker over the 
hills and shrouded in turn the objects in the 
valley. At length I hear the falling shower 
at the foot of the meadow; now it climbs the 

349 



HEART OF THE STORM 

hill — it reaches the lawn — it strikes the roof. 
But there is no wind at the surface of the 
ground, or but the gentlest breeze. 

The storm was fairly upon us, and for two 
hours it seemed to center in a shallow de- 
pression two or three thousand feet south of 
Underledge, and rock to and fro, unable to 
find an exit. It was magnificent, but it was 
awful in the strictest sense. The rain, at first 
rather gentle but decided, and leaving no 
room for doubt that it was a bona-fide rain, 
grew heavier and heavier until we could 
almost imagine it to be what they call in the 
West a " cloud-burst," and with slight fluc- 
tuations this continued for considerably over 
an hour. Meantime, we were under fire from 
all Heaven's artillery. The flashes followed 
quickly one upon another, sometimes several in 
succession, before there came from them the 
first peal of thunder, and yet these followed so 
rapidly, crash upon crash, that it seemed that 
we were in the very heart of the storm. 
Underneath was the steady, subdued roar of 
the falling rain — an obbligato accompaniment 
— that sounded like the rumble of a distant 
train. 

Sometimes the flashes were from cloud to 
cloud, but oftenest they fell almost perpen- 
dicularly from the clouds to the earth, and 
were vivid until they were lost behind the 
thick foliage. Two or three hundred yards 

150 



HEART OF THE STORM 

below me on the hill-side a bolt struck a 
neighbor's barn, and the proverbial " ball of 
fire " passed between him and a friend, they 
being within the barn. How utterly weak 
and impotent one feels in the presence of such 
supreme and resistless power ! Man's boasted 
strength is but as the breath of a moth against 
'Niagara. We can but quietly yield ourselves 
to a force which none can control, and await 
the issue. 

At length the flashes of light and crashes 
of sound are perceived no longer over the 
valley, but seem to be retiring to the south- 
eastward. Suddenly for a moment the clouds 
part slightly in the west, and the sun peers 
through. It is but for a moment, and the 
rain still falls heavily. Less and less heavily, 
however, it falls; the clouds become more 
broken in the west ; lines of light stretch across 
the intervale ; the storm is past. 

Peace! The sunlight glistens on the blades 
of the grass and on its fringy tops which gently 
bow before the light wind. And through and 
over them, hither and thither wing their way 
innumerable yellow butterflies. What pure 
souls are these that seem to have been born of 
the storm ? 



151 



XX 

CHEATING THE EYES 

I HAVE just made a notable discovery. 
It may have been made a score of times 
before, but it is wholly new to me, and I 
doubt not will be new to nearly all, if 
not quite all, of my readers. 

I am sitting on my veranda with my eyes 
about eight or nine feet distant from the rustic 
railing which incloses it. In looking through 
the railing at the slender birch trees at the end 
of the lawn, I discovered a moment ago that 
when one of them was directly behind one of 
the balusters (these being slightly less in 
diameter than the distance between my eyes) 
I could see it with greater distinctness, and 
make out the details more readily than I could 
under other circumstances. This fact was so 
surprising that I tried the experiment over and 
over again, with the same result. On making 
repeated trials upon other objects I found a 
similar effect, but not expressed so definitely. 
The increased clearness, though unmistakable, 
is not so considerable but that to make ab- 
solutely sure of it one must observe with 
care; but when the contrasts are great, as 

152 



CHEATING THE EYES 

upon the white stems of the birches as com- 
pared with the markings upon them, or with 
the surrounding objects, it becomes unequiv- 
ocal. 

It is well known that a small hole in a 
shutter or other screen may be used without a 
lens as a camera, and will give a very good 
image in a dark room. I have even heard of 
photographs having been taken with such an 
improvised instrument. Again, it is a com- 
mon practice to use the hand closed as nearly 
as may be into a cylinder as a spying tube, 
when we wish to see into the distance more 
distinctly, or in reading when we are so un- 
fortunate as to find ourselves bereft of the 
spectacles or eye-glasses with which, by a 
singular and happy dispensation of bountiful 
nature, middle-aged persons so frequently find 
themselves endowed. 

By the way, is it not probable that to this 
endowment perhaps more largely than to any- 
thing else is to be traced that increased 
longevity in the human race characteristic of 
modern times? (I am not comparing with 
the figures of the Pentateuch.) If in former 
days sight were subject to the same vicissitudes 
as at present, activities which can now be con- 
tinued at will through the years of a long life 
must have been laid aside as wholly im- 
practicable at an early age, with all the inevi- 
table consequent depression and distancing in 

153 



CHEATING THE EYES 

the race for a subsistence, to say nothing of 
comfort and enjoyment. 

My theory in regard to the phenomenon 
which I have described is that it is due in 
some manner to the principle of the di- 
aphragm. It is as if I deceived my eyes by a 
subterfuge, and obtained the benefit of the 
deceit, as, under the tutelage of his crafty 
mother, the dutiful Jacob did through the 
sense of touch. I seem to say to myself, " Now 
I am looking through a narrow aperture 
between two edges — such being the case, re- 
port to me what ou find before you." For 
you will observe, if you try a similar experi- 
ment, that while you are adjusting the focus 
of your eyes to the object which you wish to 
inspect, and intermittently while you are in- 
specting it, you are conscious of two images 
of the intervening object, between which you 
appear to be looking. 

While speaking of optical phenomena I 
might refer to another circumstance which 
may also be perfectly familiar. I do not re- 
call having ever heard it mentioned, though I 
have a vague recollection of having seen it 
stated somewhere, that the center of the retina 
becomes fatigued, seared as it were, after long 
use, and loses sensitiveness. However this 
may be, frequent observation through many 
years has made it clear to me that if I desire 
to see an object which is extremely indistinct, 

154 



CHEATING THE EYES 

especially, for example, upon a dark night, I 
can frequently do so by looking a little to one 
side of it, and catching it, if I may say so, on 
the margin of the retina, although I cannot 
see a vestige of it when looking directly toward 
it. I think that after a little practice others 
will discover this to be so, if they observe 
carefully. 



155 



XXI 

AN IMPRESSION 

UNDER the inspiration of a strong 
breeze from the south the aeolian 
harp at the window has to-day been 
singing almost constantly, and with 
inexpressible sweetness — sweetness, that is, 
which I cannot express: from the lowest mur- 
murs to the highest tone which it can reach: 
breathing such acute longings, plaints, and 
reveries, as pierce one to the very marrow. If 
parting be " such sweet sorrow," what shall 
we say of music like unto this ? 

"lam never merry when I hear sweet music," 

says Jessica, and merriment seems as far as 
the antipodes from the emotion produced when 
listening to this minstrel. Yet it makes one 
crave companionship — crave something in the 
way of a refuge from this intense insistence 
upon the underlying pathos of life. 

This is one of the days when it seems as 
foolish to think of the world about us as with- 
out a real poignant life as to think so of our- 
selves. One is not always conscious of this 
feeling about the world. Sometimes it seems 

156 



AN IMPRESSION 

inert: simply the scene of operations. To- 
day it is wholly different : it is all instinct with 
life. The framework is palpitating: vegeta- 
tion is luxuriant : the trees are masses of heavy 
and healthy foliage: the fields are teeming with 
richness in everything that grows. Butter- 
flies flutter here and there: the air is full of 
the songs of birds, of the chirp and whir of 
insects: grass and blossom and shrub and tree 
tumble and toss, and wave in each tingling leaf, 
and respond in murmurs to the solicitation 
of the breeze: while the spirit finds its perfect 
utterance in the voice of the harp, in which 
throbs the very heart-beat of life — in which 
are concentrated all the tides which ebb and 
flow through the sentient world. 

The tiniest growing sprays curve and spring 
in the passing breeze, with motion incessant 
and incalculable. It would seem as if they 
must be torn and crushed into nothingness, 
yet is this a part of the very making of their 
lives, which could not endure without it. Not 
a moment are they still. The leaves flutter 
and flutter in the wind, their petioles yielding, 
bending and rebounding, the cells elongating 
and contracting, working upon and among 
each other, almost as part of a moving fluid. 

" That strain again ! It had a dying fall : 
Oh, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound 
That breathes upon a bank of violets, 
Stealing and giving odor." 

157 



AN IMPRESSION 

The whole problem of the world and of life 
breathes in it. I listen with awe and with 
wonder: with awe at that which is, and with 
both awe and wonder at that which may be. 

For a moment it is silent. Then, far off, 
I hear a single tone, a soft and gentle murmur. 
It fades to the most attenuated essence of 
sound : then rises, and into it glide other tones 
until the chord is full, and a great peal rings 
out — a peal of triumph, or a shriek of despair. 
Anon a gentler tone makes itself heard 
beneath ; the peal sinks lower and lower ; little 
by little the harmony is unraveled until it 
dies away, a plaintive wail or sob which is but 
a divine breath. 

It is interesting, but can hardly be accounted 
singular, that so large a proportion of its in- 
tervals are in the minor mode. It continually 
recurs to and repeats with persistency the 
sixth, but lays less stress upon the third, and 
only occasionally falls upon and rests firmly 
on the tonic. It sings the psalm of life, with 
its aspirations ever unfulfilled, but making 
music of its pain, and enriching, the world 
with its unsatisfied longings. 



158 



XXII 
MY SCULPTORS 

WE are so new, in this New- 
England— in "The New World." 
It doesn't seem to make any dif- 
ference that our Laurentian rocks 
are a part of the very core of the earth, and 
sisters of the Alps and the Apennines. We 
ourselves are but of yesterday, and the varnish 
is not yet dry in which we try to see our re- 
flection, if, haply, varnish there be. It is true 
that we have already greatly altered the sur- 
face of the country, I trust not always for the 
worse. But the alterations so far are more 
indicative of vigor than of sentiment. 

And now, as we halt a little in the breath- 
less struggle to get ahead, we suddenly realize 
that there has been a life before ours, the roots 
of which go far down into the past; a life of 
joy and of sorrow, of suffering, of struggle, 
and of aspiration; and we feel an indistinct 
craving to grasp a little more strongly the 
importance of the long sweep, and to lay less 
stress upon the incidental material contest in 
which we are at present engaged. And we 
begin to seek for something which is not 

159 



MY SCULPTORS 

exactly new, or at least which does not seem 
to be new. 

I think that it is perhaps nearly as much 
for this reason, as on aesthetic grounds, though 
unconsciously, that in the numerous dwelling 
houses which have been erected in the rural 
districts during the past score of years, so 
much effort has been made to avoid the appear- 
ance of newness. We have few country 
houses of any antiquity — even in the American 
sense — which are commodious and homelike, 
and the many people who in recent years have 
sought a refuge in the suburban districts, both 
the wealthy and those of moderate means, have 
been forced to build for themselves, or to 
accept what has been newly constructed. We 
still, with comparative infrequency, build in 
the country with any other material than 
wood. Even very expensive mansions are so 
constructed. Some time we shall wake up to 
the realization that we might do better, but 
meanwhile, amid much which is crude, prog- 
ress has really been made toward both the 
substantial and the beautiful. 

I suppose that nothing looks quite so new at 
the outset as a new wooden house, although 
few things become more picturesque with age 
than do these in some instances. And under 
the kindly meteorological influences age comes 
on apace. But our people have seen a great 
light, and they must have both age and beauty 

1 60 



MY SCULPTORS 

without delay; and along comes the ingenious 
manufacturer and furnishes to them certain 
creosote stains for their shingles and their 
boards, and, presto! the curtain lifts from the 
past, and as the carpenter passes out at one 
door, and the painter at another, the walls and 
the roofs already show the lapse of years, the 
spread of mold, and mildew, and rust, and the 
ravages of decay. It is a coup de theatre — 
the illusion is sometimes wonderfully success- 
ful, and the possessor revels in a pinchbeck 
antiquity. 

Some whose nerve has not been quite equal 
to this expedient, yet whose imaginations are 
impressed by the vision of the past and our 
participation in the life which flows from it, 
and by a love for and delight in the beautiful, 
have thought it not improper to avail of the 
aid of the more direct influences of nature 
through the material made ready to our hand. 
In times past, storm and frost have shattered 
the outcropping rocks upon the tops and sides 
of our hills; laboriously the farmers have 
gathered the fragments into rude walls, thus 
separating and at the same time relieving their 
fields for future planting, and then lichen and 
moss have wxmdrously decorated these walls 
in an infinite variety of form and delicate 
color. These stones, with all the beauty that 
the years have given them, have now and then 
been transported with care and built into the 

161 



MY SCULPTORS 

walls of our simpler cottages, and tied to- 
gether with a cement which assumes a tone in 
perfect keeping with them, and we find our- 
selves possessed of a substructure which at 
least is not fraudulent, and which justifies it- 
self by its harmonious agreement with its sur- 
roundings. 

Then, above, the unpainted shingles — give 
them but a little time — yield without violence 
to the solicitation of the sun and the rain, the 
wind and the fogs, and, month by month, and 
year by year, mellow and ripen into the soft 
bluish or silvery gray which is akin to the 
walls which they surmount. 

Occasionally, though not often, one like my- 
self has ventured still further in the search 
after the harmonious and the picturesque, com- 
bined with the stable, and in building the 
porches or verandas so essential to comfort in 
this climate, has used the trunks and branches 
of the red cedar or savin tree, Juniperus Vir- 
giniana, which is so common, and which has 
very tough and exceedingly durable wood. 

And this long prelude brings me to the sub- 
ject of my sketch. Under the rather loose 
shreddy bark of the dead cedar is the favorite 
burrowing place of a gray worm or grub, 
about a third or half an inch in length. These 
worms, in countless numbers, form my corps 
of sculptors. Their function is to channel the 
surface of the wood in an immense variety of 

162 



MY SCULPTORS 

intricate and very beautiful patterns, and they 
do it with an unfailing grace and patience 
which an Oriental artist might not rival. 

Their bolder work has much the character 
of Saracenic decoration, and in some cases it 
seems as if one familiar with the symbols 
should be able to interpret the arabesques, and 
reveal the story which has been recorded. On 
a finely curved limb which forms the balus- 
trade upon one side of the steps to my front 
porch, which was found finished and stripped 
upon a dead and weather-beaten tree beyond 
the ledge, it seems as if an artist from the 
Alhambra itself had been at work, and I am 
sure that if I could read it, I should find there 
quaint and romantic tales of Boabdil and the 
Abencerages. Wherever the bark has been 
left sufficiently long, the whole surface is 
diapered in wandering lines which seem to 
have a definite significance. Elsewhere the 
style of the work affects that of the Aztecs, or 
that of the Japanese, and frequently the 
tracery is more delicate, often taking a but- 
terfly shape, a straight body in intaglio, with 
radiating lines upon each side forming the 
wings, falling into or crossed by wandering 
curves which bind the whole together. Here 
and there appear minute perforations into the 
depths of the wood, from which, while the 
work continues, the debris is ejected in powder 
like the finest sawdust. 

163 



MY SCULPTORS 

Some of the trees were already dead, but 
others were still growing when cut to take 
their place in the construction. I have en- 
deavored to retain the bark unmolested until 
it should be loosened by the weather, that the 
artificers might have the more time to complete 
their work. No evidence of this work is 
shown while it is in progress, save in the 
powdery dust which accumulates at the tiny 
outlets and falls to the floor. But when I 
remove a strip of the bark, the connection of 
which with the wood has been broken by the 
weather and the work done beneath it, I find 
the surprised workmen, soft articulate bodies, 
imbedded in their chips, conscious evidently of 
a momentous change in their situation for 
which they were unprepared. They belong 
in the class of those who love darkness rather 
than light, although, from my point of view, 
their deeds are not evil, and with the removal 
of the bark their toil and their lives alike come 
to an end. 

They have no feet, and seem to have no 
eyes, for which, indeed, they have no use; are 
largest at the end which appears to be the 
head, in the middle of the front of which is set 
a complete and effective boring apparatus with 
which they perform their task. What is the 
order of their lives, and what are the other 
stages of their existence, I have not yet had an 
opportunity to observe. 

164 



XXIII 

THE CHIMNEY SWAL- 
LOWS 



"Joy dwells under the roof-tree where the stork has built 
his nest." 

u Mary, Mary, quite contrary, 
How does your garden grow ? " 



A S the days begin to lengthen, the cold 
A\ begins to strengthen," and e con- 
£ ^ verso, as the days begin to shorten 
the heat waxes greater and 
greater and the life currents run more swiftly 
in tree and shrub and herb. These vines 
twine themselves closely around the posts and 
those thrust out their long tendrils with their 
involved spirals, and feel after some friendly 
support, if haply they may find that to which 
they may safely cling. The morning-glory 
spreads its heavenly salver to catch the pearl 
drops of the early day, but with the growing 
hours rolls up its delicate chalice and hides its 
heart from the too insistent advances of the 
o'ermastering sun. It remains forever shy, 
and you may in no way so ingratiate yourself 
with it as to disarm its modesty. Come at its 

165 



CHIMNEY SWALLOWS 

own time and watch it among its comrades 
while the day is young, and you may fill your- 
self with the joy of its perfect beauty. But 
dare to pluck it from its stem and take it 
within the walls, and it will shiver and shrivel 
into hopeless wreck. 

Though the month of roses be past, and the 
queen be dead, yet as ever lives the queen and, 
solitary it may be, or in company select and 
few, she reigns in state, the undisputed ruler 
of the floral realm. There be two classes in 
this realm : the rose, and the other flowers, and 
of the first you can but say, her breath is as the 
breath of the rose — is not this enough? — and 
her beauty is that of a rose in June. You see 
that she is beyond compare: she has no rival 
but herself. 

The wild garden no longer hints at the bare 
brown earth of the weeks that are gone, but 
has become a wilderness of green and gold 
and pink and blue, and all the colors which 
were scattered over the hillside when the last 
rainbow was broken. It gives me plenty to do 
to check the strong fellows who are too aggres- 
sive, to succor the tender infants which are 
lost in the crowd, and to eject the intruders 
who have not yet won their right to be con- 
sidered of the elect. And from it I wander 
away to the shrubs which begin to swagger 
and straggle, and to the tiny trees which are 
like to be overwhelmed by the rampant grass. 

1 66 



CHIMNEY SWALLOWS 

But the day waxes hotter and hotter. 
Overhead, far, far above me, there are birds 
in long circling flight, but the songs of the 
morning are stilled. It is pleasant to seek the 
shelter of the study, with its restful shade. 

Seated in an easy-chair my eyes wander 
here and there over the dear familiar objects 
which date from the days which are no longer, 
the days when the world was young. And at 
last they rest upon a tile upon which I see a 
nest and birds, and an inscription — painted 
how long ago, who shall say? by one whom 
the world tired out, lo! these many years 
agone : " Joy dwells under the roof-tree where 
the stork has built his nest." Alas! the stork 
came not. On the bare stairway of the new 
house I hear no patter of tiny feet ; the rippling 
sound of no merry voices breaks upon my ear. 
A subdued murmur of crickets and other 
chirping things always fills the air; from time 
to time in through the open window comes 
the whir of a distant locust, but within there 
is nothing to disturb my loneliness. Even 
drowsy Kittiwink is wandering somewhere in 
a kitten's heaven. 

But a slight stir touches my ear. I wake 
from my dream and listen. For a moment 
all is still ; then I hear in the chimney a well- 
remembered muffled sound and a flutter, and 
then I know: the Home is no longer New, for 
the swallows have come ! 

167 



XXIV 
KITTIWINK 

PERMIT me to introduce to you Kitti- 
wink, the direct successor of the de- 
posed and suppressed Titus Androni- 
cus. Just at the present writing he is 
sitting on the desk before me, with both paws 
upon my left hand, but what is true of him 
at one moment is not apt to be true of the 
next. For example, having completed my 
sentence, I find him cuddled down against my 
hand, with the fore part of his body upon the 
sheet of paper, and his head about three inches 
away from my pen. I think that he has closed 
his eyes, which are turned away from me, and 
determined to take a nap, for ordinarily, as 
soon as I begin to write, down goes his paw 
upon the point of my pen, so concealing the 
paper from me and making writing rather 
difficult, while not greatly aiding composition. 
He has great times in the pigeon holes of 
my desk, not showing due respect to the lucu- 
brations of genius there stored, but, in fact, 
rather inclined to make sport of them. He 
does not usually " stay put " longer than about 
" half a shake," at the end of which time he 

168 



KITTIWINK 

either has the end of my penhandle in his 
mouth or is smearing the ink about at its point 
and transferring it so as to make autographs 
of Horace Greeley upon another sheet. 

I think that Kitty is about four weeks old 
come some time or other in the future. He has 
now ruled the mansion for ten or twelve days, 
and most of my garments bear testimony to the 
fact in the fringed and tasselated appearance 
which they show because of his sharp talons. 
For he seems to be under the impression that 
my legs are intended as a sort of inverted 
toboggan slide, up which it is great fun to go 
at such speed as the fates permit, more or less 
successfully, according to the depth to which 
said talons penetrate. It does not much 
matter whether I am at my desk or at the 
table, the performance is always in order. He 
discovered the beauties of this diversion while 
I was at my first meal after his arrival, and it 
took him very few seconds to reach my shoul- 
ders. When he is lazy he just snuggles down 
against the back of my neck and goes to sleep, 
but it cannot be said that he is often lazy. 
Usually he finds it much pleasanter to reach 
around with his paw and catch at my whiskers, 
or to rasp my ear with his tongue, or to chew 
and claw at my back hair. He does not 
molest that upon my forehead and the top of 
my cranium, for obvious reasons. When, as 
occasionally happens, his ascent is impeded by 

169 



KITTIWINK 

a long tablecloth resting against my knees and 
making for him the sign, " No thoroughfare," 
he quietly succumbs and curls around and goes 
to sleep at the point to which he happens to 
have attained. I suppose that to him it is 
something like passing the night at the Grands 
Mulets. 

If I could think it quite possible for a feline 
creature to form positive and disinterested at- 
tachments, I should believe that he was really 
fond of me, for he welcomes me in the morn- 
ing and follows me from room to room as a 
dog might, and seems always happier when 
somewhere about my person. His capacity 
for fun is absolutely unlimited, and a life of 
joking seems the normal condition of his exist- 
ence. He is quite conscious that his teeth and 
claws are becoming long and sharp, and he 
makes free use of them, testing carefully how 
much I will bear, taking hold of my finger, for 
example, and squinting up at me, or laying his 
ears back while he holds it with a certain grip, 
waiting to see what I will say. When he 
becomes a little too free in the use of his 
weapons I box his ears, and he understands 
just as well, and I think a little better than a 
small human, what I mean by it. 

If it were not for the humor and the super- 
abounding vitality of a kitten, one would be 
disposed to think that the domestic cat had 
become in large measure a parasite, living upon 

170 



KITTIWINK 

members of the human race. But I imagine 
after all that we must esteem it an animal 
possessed of the largest possible capacity for 
appreciating comfort, an animal to which com- 
fort has become the one supreme essential of 
existence, to be followed after with whomso- 
ever it is to be found, without respect to per- 
sons. 

I have heard it said that there are females 
of the human race {Homo felis, fern.), a purr- 
ing, cuddling kind, having precisely the same 
characteristics. Was not Manon Lescaut one 
of these ? Poor Manon ! How wholly un- 
congenial it was to her to have a bad quarter 
of an hour anywhere ! She had a Puritan con- 
science, turned inside out, and the pattern did 
not come through to the other side. 

On Sunday last Kittiwink had a new ex- 
perience. On Sunday morning we had a 
sharp hoarfrost. The atmosphere was as 
clear as a bell, and every object scintillated 
under the brilliant sunshine. But the cold 
wind from the north sent a chill to the bones, 
for only four days earlier we had recorded the 
highest temperature of the year. Therefore I 
heaped wood upon the broad fireplace and 
soon had a sparkling, blazing, crackling fire 
casting a warm glow over the study. Puss 
had never seen such a thing before, and his 
antics were very amusing. Fortunately the 
screen prevented him from reaching it, or I 

171 



KITTIWINK 

doubt not we should in about two minutes 
have had a generous distribution of the burn- 
ing stuff over the floor of the study. As it 
was, he had to content himself with running to 
and fro and poking his nose against the screen, 
scampering off, and quickly returning to reach 
after the fire with his paws. 

And how genially the world smiled as the 
flames arose! The spirit of comfort seized 
me also, and I resigned myself to an easy-chair, 
and the companionship of Stevenson in his 
charming " Inland Voyage." And there I 
came across such a comfortable sentence ! " It 
is a commonplace that we cannot answer for 
ourselves before we have been tried. But it is 
not so common a reflection, and surely more 
consoling, that we usually find ourselves a 
great deal braver and better than we thought." 

Now I am going to confess that I am an ar- 
rant coward. The students from College 

intimate that this is because I never indulged 
in the divine game of football — never had a 
one-hundred-and-fifty-pounder jump upon my 
back, and never jumped upon the back of any- 
one else, or even knocked him down and sat on 
his head. They say that until this amusement 
came into vogue the people of the world were 
a set of milksops, and were it to cease to be 
practiced, they would deteriorate into jellyfish. 
This is probably so. I can see that had I had 
these advantages I might be sitting up o' 

172 






K I T T I W I N K 

nights, bravely preparing to make round holes 
in the dun deer's hide by the light of a pine 
torch, or be getting up in the chill of the 
morning and valiantly yanking out of the 
pearly water delicate speckled trout, all shin- 
ing and sparkling in the first rays of the dawn, 
and then ingeniously stringing them upon a 
forked stick. But, oh! how they would 
wriggle ! 

Ah! how I wish that I were a brave man 
like one of these! Instead of that, I have to 
stand (or sit) revealed inanely watching the 
gambols of Kittiwink, or warming my super- 
ficies before an open wood fire, and in spirit 
accompanying the lamented Robert Louis 
Stevenson as he gently meanders over the 
bosom of the Oise, idly counting the strokes of 
his paddle and fearing lest he should remember 
the hundreds. 

And then I recall for my consolation the 
sentence which I have quoted above. And I 
read how he says: "I wish sincerely, for it 
would have saved me much trouble, there had 
been someone to put me in a good heart about 
life when I was younger; to tell me how 
dangers are more portentous on a distant 
sight ; and how the good in a man's spirit will 
not suffer itself to be overlaid, and rarely or 
never deserts him in the hour of need." And 
as I pass out at the door and look upon the 
distant hills, blue-green, and clear-cut against 

173 



KITTIWINK 

the lighter sky — as I see the leaves still pulsing 
with sap, and incessantly moving as though 
full of life, as, indeed, they are — as I listen to 
the crickets and other insects rilling the air 
with their chirping by day as by night, I feel 
that somehow we are all tied together, and 
that it is very pleasant not to be at war; but 
that, perhaps, if war must come, Fitz James, 
with his back against a rock, might find him- 
self all right after all, even though he had not 
been brought up to feed upon raw English- 
man. 



174 



XXV 
MY SPORTING COLUMN 



I HAVE often heard housekeepers express 
a strong desire for the invention of a new 
animal by means of which they might 
add to their repertoire of viands for the 
table. We are all familiar with the school- 
boy's choice of meats — ram, lamb, sheep, and 
mutton. There is certainly monotony in this, 
but even the more extended bill of fare which 
is supplied on ordinary boards leaves some- 
thing to be desired, according to the house- 
wife. 

In like manner there are those upon whom 
the familiar entertainments of life sometimes 
pall. To them existence becomes flat, stale, 
and unprofitable, and, like Alexander, they 
crave yet other worlds to conquer. I am 
about to present to these an inestimable boon, 
a new form of sport — the adventurous chase 
after flying game. 

I do not believe that it has ever occurred to 
you what possibilities there are in the wasp. 
I mean the real wasp, the paper wasp, Polistes 

175 



MY SPORTING COLUMN: I 

rubiginosuSj if that is his favorite name; not 
any of your milk-and-water " digger " wasps. 
These may be interesting in their way, but 
they are not exciting. But the paper wasp — 
ah ! I approached him at first with hesitation 
and awe. I discovered him about a fortnight 
ago. He had built a few nests upon the under 
side of the roof in the loft, and was very 
properly and industriously engaged in raising 
a large and promising family. He appeared 
in considerable numbers, and being myself yet 
ignorant of the rules of the sport, I did not 
know how to handle him. Possibly, however, 
the method which I adopted was not so bad 
after all. 

I might have burned down the cottage, but 
this did not seem wise. After mature de- 
liberation, I fastened to the end of a piece of 
bamboo a tin funnel, the tube of which I had 
stopped with cotton. Taking another wad of 
cotton, I soaked it thoroughly with chloro- 
form, and placed it in the funnel ; and then, by 
a rapid movement, surrounded my prey, press- 
ing the funnel firmly against the roof. After 
holding the apparatus there long enough, as it 
seemed to me, to cause vertigo upon the part 
of the victims, I scraped off the nest, and 
killed the half-dazed occupants one by one. 

This, I thought, was the end of the matter ; 
but no. Since then, morning and night, I 
have visited the precincts at the top of the 

176 



MY SPORTING COLUMN: I 

house, and night and morning I have found 
new members of the tribe gathered on the 
under side of the skylight or upon the window 
in the gable. And then came the excitement 
of the chase. There are various ways in 
which it can be prosecuted. I have found a 
yardstick and a portiere rod both useful, each 
in its appropriate place. If your aim is good 
you may hit the fellow at the first shot and 
bring him to the floor and then dispatch him 
at your leisure. If, however, your glasses de- 
ceive you (and glasses are endowed with a 
certain depravity), you may strike just upon 
one side, whereupon your intended victim will 
make a rush as quick as thought, and where he 
will take you you do not know until the time 
comes. Then you step back quickly and find 
yourself just an inch and a half from the scut- 
tle-way. These are the interesting incidents 
of the chase, but when you become skillful 
they are limited in number. I have been stung 
twice; once upon the finger, when no wasp 
was visible — this was by a sort of surplus sting 
which was lying around loose somewhere; the 
other time on the cheek, on which occasion, by 
a sudden brush of my hand, I prevented the 
sting from going deep, there not being enough 
cheek to hold it firmly, and at the same time 
flung my spectacles down into the second story, 
thus entailing on their part a three-days' visit 
to the city. 

177 



MY SPORTING COLUMN: I 

The bedrooms have also proved a fruitful 
hunting ground. The favorite spot there is 
a narrow space between the ceiling and a 
molding over the dormer windows. One 
evening I bagged fifteen in a single room, and 
I never have wholly failed of some success for 
twenty-four hours. But the game is becoming 
scarce. That is because I have not encouraged 
it, but rather the contrary. My skill has not 
really increased, and I feel that my methods 
too nearly resemble those of the boy who uses 
worms for bait. I am too uniformly success- 
ful. I am dispirited, like the young woman 
whose shopping expedition was a failure be- 
cause she found what she asked for at the very 
first shop that she entered. But I am sure that 
the sport can be so managed as to prevent the 
extinction of the game and to maintain the in- 
terest of the chase. 

Indeed, it is a handy game for all classes. 
But if there is anyone to whom it must come 
as a positive delight, it is to the three hundred 
ninety and nine, or whatever may be the 
proper number at this particular date. Just 
think of it as an entertainment in country 

houses in or elsewhere. And in rainy 

weather it would be invaluable both for men 
and women. It could be so conducted as to 
involve a considerable amount of risk ; I could 
indicate several ways in which this could be 
done. And I am sure that tackle could be 

178 






MY SPORTING COLUMN: I 

invented by which the game could be kept 
in torment — " played," as it were, for a long 
period. As it is, it has more lives than a cat, 
and wriggles as vigorously and more vindic- 
tively than a fish. 

The sport could also be transferred to the 
city, and I think, by proper adjustments of 
heating apparatus, it could be managed that 
there should be no " close " season. And as 
to the danger of an exhaustion of the supply, 
I am satisfied that this need not be feared. 
The supply depends upon the demand, and 
breeders would soon arise, ready to furnish all 
that could be required, and at a moderate 
price. 

I am in hopes that nothing more will be 
needed than these few words to further the 
introduction and prosecution of this most at- 
tractive sport. 



179 



XXVI 

MY SPORTING COLUMN 

ii 

WHAT an extremely thin veneer 
civilization is, after all, whether 
in cats or in kings! It is true 
that my recent experience in cats 
(for Kittiwink is but new) has been limited 
mainly to one — Titus Andronicus — now, alas ! 
no longer an inhabitant of this sphere, at least 
in the particular form in which I knew him. 
What metempsychosic form he may have 
taken (if one may be pardoned such an ex- 
pression) I cannot say. But as a cat, Titus 
is no more. 

I was disappointed in Titus, but I should 
not have been. No kind maiden aunt had 
ever presided over his childish frolics, or 
taught him the gentle habits befitting a do- 
mestic cat. As I have elsewhere said, his 
babyhood was spent in a barn — not a bad 
place, by the way, in which to have a good 
time, but a place, nevertheless, where bad 
habits may be acquired. 

At an early age he was transferred to 

1 80 



MY SPORTING COLUMN: II 

Underledge, and there duly installed, with 
two servants wholly at his disposal, Hickory 
Ann and myself. For six months we were at 
his beck and call. All that we could do for 
him he accepted without embarrassment, but 
he gave little in return. His one great enjoy- 
ment was to lie out in the sun, and whenever 
he was approached to stretch himself at full 
length and rub against anything that was 
handy, saying that he was ready to be stroked : 
yes, he experienced one greater pleasure; to 
be lifted up from the floor by his tail, and 
allowed to fall upon his feet. This was a 
source of unfailing delight, and always re- 
sulted in a demand for an encore. 

Titus was well brought up. He lived upon 
the fat of the land. He had a fair variety in 
his menu, and I had no reason to suppose that 
he was dissatisfied with his board. 

He should have realized that I wanted the 
poultry for my own use. But I missed many 
plump chickens, and one day, happening to pass 
by that way, and hearing a great commotion 
in the flock, I espied Titus speeding toward 
the wood with a handsome little fledgeling in 
his mouth. I followed him under the trees, 
but sought him in vain. Some time later he 
was seen entering the house licking his chops, 
with an expression of great contentment upon 
his countenance. And so Titus was doomed. 

My experience in kings is less, if anything, 

181 



MY SPORTING COLUMN : II 

than my experience in cats. At Underledge 
we are all stanch republicans, and when any 
kings come along they are sent incontinently 
to the tramp-house. We keep them in seclu- 
sion, and this allows full play to our imagina- 
tions. 

But if we do not know so much about 
kings as we might, we know about the rest 
of mankind, nous autres, and we notice some 
curious things. 

Once upon a time, I saw this as in a vision. 
It was in a forest glade, and 

" The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, 
Bearded with moss, and in garments green," 

cast a brooding shade over the sloping banks. 
The sunlight fell flickering between the leaves, 
and sparkled upon the moss, and upon the 
goldenrod and the asters with which it was 
sprinkled. Not far away a woodthrush piped 
in clear ringing tones ; in front, a broad brook, 
which had just fallen over ragged rocks, 
tarried for a moment to rest in a deep pool 
from which the sunlight was broadly reflected, 
and then launched forward with ever-increas- 
ing speed, to hurry faster and faster, down, 
down among the fragments of hard granite, 
here and there worn smooth by the clear, 
foaming water. Between the tree-tops beyond 
the brook, the blue sky seemed palpitating with 
light, while now and again a white, fleecy 

182 



MY SPORTING COLUMN: II 

cloud floated lazily across the opening, as 
soft as thistle-down. Over the water hovered 
an ichneumon fly, Psyche, or some other 
winged thing, and sometimes for a moment 
the nose of a trout would appear above the 
surface, to be followed immediately by a 
splash, as with a quick curve it darted away, 
its tail flashing in the sunlight. It was doubt- 
less following some insect, and probably car- 
ried it down with it. The leaves gently 
rustled in the slight breeze, and save this and 
the singing of the birds, the voice of the stream 
and the chirping of the insects, no sound fell 
upon the ear. 

Upon this sylvan scene, strolling leisurely 
up the brook, for they had just eaten 
heartily, came two young men. One, whose 
botanical name was Homo Venator, was tall 
and broad-shouldered, his features were good, 
and his form indicated strength and vigor. 
He carried a gun on his shoulder. Stepping 
aside from something which lay in his path, 
he quoted from him whom the English call 
" Cooper," 

11 I would not enter on my list of friends 

(Though graced with polish'd manners and fine sense 

Yet wanting sensibility) the man 

Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm." 

" Yet," said the other " you will find men 
even in our own set, with no delicacy of feel- 
ing in such matters." 

183 



MY SPORTING COLUMN: II 

" True," said the first " but no one of fine 
breeding could voluntarily expose himself to 
the danger of being a witness of frequent 
scenes of cruelty." 

" Apropos, — how in the world could any- 
one voluntarily take up the occupation of a 
butcher? " said the other. 

"Ugh! disgusting! Don't suggest it. It 
almost makes me sick to think of the things 
now hanging in camp," replied the first. 

His companion, Homo Piscator, was of 
medium height, with well-knit frame, and firm 
and elastic step. He carried in his hand a 
long and slender rod, fully equipped with line 
and sharp-barbed hook of glossy blue steel. 
His features were delicate and refined, his eye 
was clear and intelligent. For a moment he 
looked around upon the quiet scene and 
seemed to drink in a deep draught of the balmy 
air. 

" Did you ever see a more perfect and har- 
monious picture? " said he. 

His friend made no reply, for none was 
needed. To add epithets to the scene before 
them would be to paint the lily. 

While Venator seated himself in the shade 
with his back to a splendid pine, Piscator took 
his stand upon the rocky bank, and opening a 
tin box which hung at his side, selected from a 
writhing tangle of such, a red worm two or 
three inches in length. This he proceeded to 

184 



MY SPORTING COLUMN: II 

thread upon the sharp hook, running the point 
through it here and there in such a manner as 
to keep it impaled securely, but not to kill it, 
the worm meantime squirming and lashing 
itself about, stretching out to its utmost 
length, and then retracting until its segments 
were crowded into the closest possible contact. 
For does not Izaak Walton say: " Put your 
hook into him somewhat above the middle, and 
out again a little below the middle; having so 
done, draw the worm above the arming of 
your hook; but note that at the entering of 
your hook it must not be at the head-end of 
the worm, but at the tail-end of him, that the 
point of your hook may come out toward the 
head-end, and, having drawn him above the 
arming of your hook, then put the point of 
your hook again into the very head of the 
worm, till it come near to the place where the 
point of the hook first came out; and then 
draw back that part of the worm that was 
above the shank or arming of your hook, and 
so fish with it." 

He did this work deftly, " gently, as if he 
loved it," and the worm remained wound 
about the hook, as the serpents remain twined 
about Laocoon and his sons in the marble 
group, but not motionless as they; it still con- 
tinued to writhe and twist under his satisfied 
and admiring glance, as he dropped it into 
the quiet pool. 

185 



MYSPORTINGCOLUMN:II 

Hardly had it disappeared when, with a 
dash, a fish caught and shot away with it, the 
slender rod bending as the line bore down 
upon it. To and fro the fish darted across the 
pool, the rod springing and swaying as 
Piscator followed and guided it here and there, 
with set face and eyes intent. Tired at length 
with the unequal contest, it permitted itself 
to be led across toward the nearer bank, and 
then, by a dextrous twitch of the rod and line, 
to be lifted from the water and thrown over 
into a safe depression in the earth, where it 
curved and flounced in the hot sunlight, try- 
ing to release itself from the hook. This, 
however, was impossible, for it had passed 
through the gills, in which the barb was 
firmly fixed, and blood was flowing from a 
ragged wound. 

The fisherman removed it with usual care, 
merely tearing through the gills, and, after 
weighing the fish in his hand with an approv- 
ing smile, tossed it back into the depression, 
where it resumed its dance of death. He then 
readjusted the bait. It was nearly all there, 
one end only having been torn away, and it 
w T as perhaps even more animated than before, 
judging from the manner in which it twisted 
and turned upon the hook. He therefore 
dropped it again into the water. 

For a time his line hung motionless, while 
the denizens of the pool were recovering from 

186 



MY SPORTING COLUMN: II 

the alarm caused by the recent disturbance. 
The eyes of the fisherman were called from 
time to time to the trout just caught, which 
now flung itself into the air, and now lay 
stretched at length upon the ground, smirched 
with dust and bits of broken leaves and twigs, 
and laboriously gasping for breath. A pull 
upon the line recalled his attention. It lasted 
but a moment, and again all was still. Then 
another, and a stronger jerk, and the line ran 
across the pool, but again became motionless, 
A third pull, and then a twitch of the elastic 
rod, and a second fish dropped beside the first, 
its hold being upon the bait alone. The fish 
previously caught was agitated anew by 
the fall of the later comer, and feebly flopped 
about, but its bright eyes were becoming 
glazed, and its motions were weak. 

The bait had now been torn to shreds, and 
only a tattered fragment of a red worm, with 
hardly life enough in it to enable it to move, 
remained attached to the hook. This Piscator 
removed with his fingers, and in its place he 
put a fresh one, disentangled from the writh- 
ing mass in the box, and the hook, with its 
twirling and twisting decoration, was again 
dropped into the water. 

Meantime the silence had been unbroken 
save as before and by the slight additional 
rustle caused by the intermittent tossing of the 
two fish, one of which now only at long in- 

187 



MY SPORTING COLUMN: II 

tervals made a convulsive turn. And it was 
but the snapping of a slender branch that 
caused the man with the gun to raise his eyes 
and see a lithe-limbed deer, with soft, round 
eyes, poke its head through the bushes some 
fifty yards away, and approach the water. 
Such breeze as there was blew toward the 
men, and the beast seemed quite unconscious 
of any observer. Advancing confidently to 
the brookside, it dropped its muzzle into the 
water to slake its thirst. 

As the cool and refreshing liquid filled its 
throat, a sharp report startled the forest. 
The deer made one leap into the air, and fell 
upon the bank, its shoulder broken by the ball. 
At the same moment the frightened wood- 
thrush fled from the glen, and all was silence. 

Venator sprang forward, and made his way 
across the brook to the spot where the beast 
was lying, struggling impotently to regain its 
feet, and with a pathetic appeal in its great 
eyes. Stooping over it he drew a sharp knife 
across its throat, and a stream of bright red 
blood spurted upon the mossy bank and flowed 
out into the clear water. 

There were as many creatures as before. 
Some of them were merely dead. And the 
men were happy. 

What is it that the French quote the 
English as saying? " It is a fine day; let's go 
and kill something." 

188 



MY SPORTING COLUMN: II 

And who was that man — either of them? 
" Get homme, cetait Tartarin, Tartarin de 
Tar as con, Vintrepide, le grand, V incomparable 
Tartarin de Tarascon." 



189 



XXVII 
AN IRIDESCENT DREAM 

WHAT a mistake it is to permit 
yourself to be caught in the com- 
pany of those who really know 
that which you only seem to 
know! I am not sure that this misfortune 
happens more frequently to the man of letters 
than it does to other members of the com- 
munity, but it certainly is not an uncommon 
occurrence with him, and it is sufficiently dis- 
agreeable. 

Just look at the situation. The literary 
artist gets hold of the fag end of an idea out 
of which he thinks something can be made, 
and, an idea being a valuable article, and not 
too common, he naturally cherishes it and 
exploits it to the best of his ability. Before 
him are his foamy suds, and, like the late 
Tityrus T. Patchouli, procumbent under the 
wide-spreading beech tree, he prepares and 
plays a pretty tune upon his pipe, as Mr. Pa- 
tchouli in praise of the lovely Ama Ryllis. 
His pipe, however, is not made of those flexible 
reeds the swaying and bending of which in the 
waters of the Oise brought such somber mus- 

190 



AN IRIDESCENT DREAM 

ings to Stevenson. No — it is a plain dudeen, 
or at most a clay pipe, which has the making of 
a dudeen in it, and only needs a fall upon the 
ground to perfect it. 

And he does his work with care. His idea 
is but a breath, a ©eift, an inspiration as it 
were, but he gives it a gorgeous housing. He 
blows gently upon his pipe — neither too 
strongly nor yet too weakly, but with a steady 
current, as if his dudeen were a blowpipe, and 
he were making an analysis of the heart of a 
coquette. Do you remember what Addison 
said of a coquette's heart? 

" We laid it into a pan of burning coals, 
when we observed in it a certain Salamandrine 
quality, that made it capable of living in the 
midst of fire and flame, without being con- 
sumed or so much as singed." 

But he is engaged in no such invidious oc- 
cupation; he is simply contributing his mite 
to the gayety of nations. And, as he blows, 
his microcosm takes form — a tiny globe, all 
his own, proudly swelling as he breathes into 
it the breath of life. At first it appears but as 
a simple translucent ball, rather dense and 
colorless, but showing latent possibilities. 
And he blows, and the ball expands, and upon 
its shining surface he begins to find echoes of 
the universe, a bit of light here, and a bit of 
shadow there, with men as trees walking, all 
a little dreamy, it may be, characterized 

191 



AN IRIDESCENT DREAM 

by a certain spherical aberration, but very 
" fetching " withal. And as he blows, and 
the sphere still enlarges, the lights and shad- 
ows become more distinct, and the figures take 
on more dignified and graceful forms, and 
assume gradually the hues that float in the 
heavenly bow, or lie treasured in the pearl. 
And anon these tints deepen into a chromatic 
glory and revolve upon the inflated globe, 
which mirrors all the world clad in an ineffa- 
ble firelight: 

" The light that never was, on sea or land} 
The consecration, and the Poet's dream." 

And then, his task completed, with a 
dexterous sweep of his pipe he sets free his 
master work, that new world which is a sort 
of apotheosis of the old. It is all true, but 
perhaps it is not all the truth. 

" She was a phantom of delight 

When first she gleamed upon my sight, 

A lovely apparition, sent 

To be a moment's ornament." 

And Zephyrus generously takes it in his 
arms and bears it aloft, all glorious in the 
light of the golden day, and the people clap 
their hands, and not only rejoice, as they 
should, at the vision of beauty which they see 
before them, but imagine that the piper is a 

192 



AN IRIDESCENT DREAM 

dictionary of the fine arts and a compendium 
of human knowledge. And they ask him all 
sorts of questions, and he is compelled to dis- 
cover that his ears have become so attuned to 
ethereal harmonies that they cannot perceive 
grosser sounds, or to plead another engage- 
ment. 

Then, perhaps, there comes along the un- 
comfortable individual to whom I alluded in 
the beginning, the one that really knows it, 
and this is the most unkindest cut of all. 
And he also thinks that the artist knows it all, 
and very courteously makes a casual remark 
about something with which, of course, the 
latter is perfectly familiar (but which he 
never heard of in his life), to which he replies 
with an interrogative "Yes?" not knowing 
what else to say ; or the newcomer asks him a 
question or two, and the artist, having no life 
preserver about his person, and being unable 
to plead an alibi, gently, sweetly, and modestly 
says that he doesn't know. And so it goes on, 
and he seems to see the point of the needle 
entering into his bubble, and has a feeling 
that the whole affair will go off in a flash, and 
that nothing will remain but a tiny drop of 
soapsuds upon the needle's point. 

For a moment he feels dizzy, and he closes 
his eyes. When he reopens them, there, thank 
Heaven! yet floats his pretty ball, still gleam- 
ing in the sun, and he inwardly prays that the 

193 



AN IRIDESCENT DREAM 

people may not have noticed his attack of ver- 
tigo or that which caused it. Probably they 
did not, and so thinking, he puts on a brave 
front, but the iron has entered into his soul. 



194 



XXVIII 

HOW TO ORIENT ONE'S 
SELF 

THERE are many situations in which 
individuals are called upon to 
orient themselves where the condi- 
tions are not so simple as in that 
which at the moment I have in mind. For 
instance, when a man has been suddenly 
" knocked into the middle of next week," as 
the phrase is, an experience to which I imagine 
that most of us have unhappily been exposed 
at some time in the course of a checkered 
existence. The perplexity in such cases is 
great, for next week is an unknown quantity. 
Looking back over unnumbered years, it seems 
to me that I remember a quotation which ran 
something like this: "Mother, when will to- 
morrow come? Each morning, when I ope 
my eyes, I look for to-morrow, and behold! 
it is to-day." And I suppose that next week 
is quite as far off as to-morrow, and quite as 
uncertain in its whereabouts. 

Even upon local option and sundry other 
questions social and political, it is not always 
easy to dream true, and I am told that on mat- 

195 



TO ORIENT ONE'S SELF 

ters connected with life, death, and judgment 
to come — " Fix'd fate, free will, foreknowl- 
edge absolute " — there is apt to be confusion. 
And in this little oasis between the silences, it 
is far from easy sometimes to adjust one's 
relations in time and space. There are some 
things which we do not know, although in cer- 
tain circles one would hardly suspect it. I 
suppose that most of us one day reach the point 
of thinking, as we look out upon the starry 
heavens, and there note millions upon millions 
of mighty bodies, uncounted and uncountable, 
receding one beyond another into apparently 
illimitable space, where the greatest telescope 
ever constructed cannot exhaust them, and at 
least extending to distances far beyond the 
power of the mathematician even to begin to 
guess, each hung upon nothing, and, so far as 
we can tell, coming from nowhere, and going 
nowhither — most of us, I say, reach the point 
of thinking that we are " very small potatoes," 
and don't know much, not even where the bin 
is or what it is like ; but that, after all, we are 
a part of the crop, and pretty sure to be looked 
after. And so we commit ourselves to the 
eternal current, and, like the mighty orbs, go 
swinging on our way, according to laws which 
we did not fashion, and against which we 
should rebel in vain. 

Notwithstanding the proper contempt in 
which the man who knows it ail holds any 

196 



TO ORIENT ONE'S SELF 

agnostic, we are sometimes forced into the 
ignominious position of confessing that we 
do not know. But, like the man who went 
to the Circumlocution Office, we want to 
know, you know, and we find a pleasant ex- 
citement in the search after truth, even though 
we may not progress very far. 

The particular thing which I wanted to 
know upon this occasion was how to find " the 
points of the compass," as the phrase goes, 
although this does not express it — namely, the 
east, west, north, and south — not a very for- 
midable problem, most will think, but less 
easy of solution, as I soon discovered, than at 
first blush it appeared to be. 

I think that I have noted the fact more 
than once before, but perhaps for clearness it 
may be well to repeat that from my rustic 
veranda I look far to the northward, until the 
view is bounded by a range of hills or moun- 
tains some thirty or thirty-five miles away, in 
Massachusetts; mountains which in such an 
atmosphere as that of to-day come out with 
clear and strong outlines, but at other times 
lie concealed in haze which seems but a part of 
the autumn sky. About half-way thither, 
two singular rounded hills rise from the valley, 
the sides facing each other being very steep. 
These are locally known as the Barndoor 
Hills, or, by those more poetically inclined, as 
the Portal of the Valley or the " Gates of 

197 



TO ORIENT ONE'S SELF 

Paradise." My own private belief has always 
been that the axis of the earth revolves in the 
groove between them, and it was to prove this 
thesis that I undertook the investigation which 
I now purpose to relate. And I relate it 
because someone else may desire to do a similar 
thing, and that I may show how involved ( for 
an ignoramus) that may be which at first 
thought seems most simple. 

Of course my first adviser says : " You 
goose! Why don't you take a compass and 
draw your north and south line by it? " The 
suggestion is an admirable one, the principal 
objection lying in this: that the one point 
toward which the compass needle does not 
point is the north. On the contrary, it points 
persistently away from the north, and in vari- 
ous directions at various places and at various 
times, varying slightly even in the course of the 
day. At London, in 1837, it pointed about 24 
degrees west; fifty years later, at the same 
place, it pointed out 20 degrees west. At 
the latter period, in New York, it pointed 
about 7 degrees west, while in San Francisco it 
pointed about 17 degrees east. In this neigh- 
borhood at the present time the variation is 
somewhere about 10 degrees west. But this 
is only the beginning of sorrows, for in the 
proximity of trap ledges, where there is more 
or less iron, there are abnormal variations 
which cannot be calculated upon, and the 



TO ORIENT ONE'S SELF 

compass, therefore, may not be accounted as in 
any way an instrument of precision. Con- 
sequently, exit the compass. 

" Well, then, why don't you take an ob- 
servation of the sun at midday and draw your 
line from that?" As the parrot says in 

Dr. 's story : " That's very good. I 

wonder what he is going to do next? " The 
sun is a plain, bright, open-faced creature, with 
no nonsense about him, and he crosses the 
meridian visibly (if he should not happen to 
be cloudy), once every day. But when? 
Aye, there's the rub! The arrangement by 
which our affairs are run upon standard time 
is a great convenience, but it tells us lies about 
the period of all events at every locality ex- 
cepting those upon the standard meridian. 
In all this region, for example, we are travel- 
ing upon (nearly) Philadelphia time; a very 
good sort of time in its way, but not just the 
same sort we used to have when we were 
boys. To find local time, we must discover 
the difference of longitude and make the neces- 
sary correction. 

Taking this course, and assuming the cor- 
rectness of the best accessible maps, made upon 
the basis of the official survey, I find that our 
local time is approximately nine minutes in 
advance of standard time. So far so good. 
But having proceeded so far, I stumble against 
the greater difficulty of the difference between 

199 



TO ORIENT ONE'S SELF 

mean, or clock, time, and apparent, or solar, 
time, these appearing not to coincide excepting 
upon April 16, June 16, September I, and 
December 25. Between these dates they wan- 
der around at their own sweet will, clock time 
being either fast or slow, as the case may be, 
and the difference in November being as great 
as sixteen minutes. To obtain my meridian 
from the sun, therefore, I must know that my 
watch is correct as to standard time, I must 
know my exact longitude, and I must know 
whether mean time is fast or slow, and how 
much. A slight error in either of the condi- 
tions would make a material difference in the 
result, and it is not easy for the ignoramus to 
make sure that he is right as to all. 

There is one resource left — that is, to take 
an observation of Polaris, the north star. 
Why did I not think of this before? I did 
think of it before, and this is what came of it. 
Attaching a small stone to a piece of cord long 
enough to reach nearly to the floor, I made a 
rude plumbline, which I suspended from a 
bracket of the veranda. After long and 
watchful waiting I found a calm evening, or 
one so nearly calm that my pendulum was 
practically motionless; then, humbling myself, 
with my eye close to the floor, so that I could 
see Polaris, (for it is surprisingly exalted in 
this latitude), I took the range and made a 
record mark for which purpose I found that a 

200 



TO ORIENT ONE'S SELF 

pair of etching needles which I planted in the 
floor of the veranda proved very serviceable. 
When the opportunity came for comparing 
the position thus found with my two hills, I 
discovered that it would not do at all; the 
axis was not in its proper groove, and the earth 
must of necessity move with a constant jar, 
not to speak of the displacement of the 
equinoxes. 

And then it occurred to me that the North 
Star is not in the north, but revolves around 
the North Pole, (or appears to do so, because 
of the rotation of the earth), like all the other 
stars, and I began a new search of the en- 
cyclopaedias, etc., for the facts. I was slow 
in discovering them, and the statements in 
regard to the facts did not always agree; but 
after a while I found that the North Pole it- 
self is on a lark — that it is swinging around a 
circle upon a journey which will take about 
26,000 years to complete. Happily, just now 
it is neighborly to Polaris, which revolves 
about it at a distance variously stated at from 
one degree and fifteen minutes to one degree 
and twenty-one minutes. 

Now, this was making progress, but it was 
some time before I discovered upon which side 
of Polaris I should look for the pole. At 
length I learned that it was in a direction 
nearly opposite to the first star ( rf or Benet- 
nasch) in the handle of the Dipper; but how 

201 



TO ORIENT ONE'S SELF 

much space in the heavens — that is, how much 
space as compared with the apparent distances 
between the stars — a degree and a quarter 
would be I could only estimate. 

I did estimate it, however, and my next 
observation was followed by a much more 
satisfactory result. And then I happened to 
turn in a direction in which I should have 
turned in the first instance had my foresight 
been as good as my hindsight, which I believe 
is rarely the case. On examining my plani- 
sphere with care, I found explicit directions for 
ascertaining the hour and minute w T hen Polaris 
is on the meridian upon any day in the year. 
For the benefit of those who may come after 
me I will record here that this meridian pass- 
age occurs at about midnight (local time) 
on October 8, at eleven o'clock on October 23, 
ten o'clock on November 8, nine o'clock on 
November 23, eight o'clock on December 8, 
seven o'clock on December 24, and six o'clock 
on January 8. I mention these hours as the 
most convenient for observations. 

It is true that in the use of this method, as 
well as in the observation of the sun, the 
difference between standard and local time 
must be taken into the account, but extreme 
accuracy is not so essential, for the rotation of 
Polaris is in so small a circle that an error 
of even several minutes in time is likely to 
cause less difference in the result than is 

202 



TO ORIENT ONE'S SELF 

practically inevitable in drawing the line. 
And within the same limit of inaccuracy the 
matter of time may be left out of the account 
altogether at points farther north than this, 
when the atmosphere is very clear near the 
horizon. For when the plumbline crosses 
Polaris and Benetnasch both at the same 
time, the pole also is so nearly on the line 
as to give the meridian as accurately as it 
is likely ever to be obtained, except by an 
expert. 

I could not allow my fresh information to 
become rusty. In the rural districts we keep 
early hours, and in the ordinary course of pro- 
cedure I should have to wait for a month be- 
fore finding an opportunity to use my newly 
acquired knowledge. However, the privilege 
having been afforded me of seeking after 
strange adventures in " The Wood Beyond 
the World," I managed to worry through 
until some time after midnight, when I could 
obtain a proper range. The air was not ab- 
solutely still, but was sufficiently so to enable 
me to prove my thesis and show to all succeed- 
ing ages where lies the pole, Peary, Jansen, 
Nordenskjold, or any or all others to the 
contrary notwithstanding. 

Since these experiments were initiated and 
carried to an approximate conclusion, my ap- 
preciation of the work of the compilers of the 

203 



TO ORIENT ONE'S SELF 

ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica 
has been greatly enhanced by the discovery 
that they recommend the same method for 
ascertaining the meridian which I had adopted. 



204 



XXIX 
A FAIR DAY 

THE wise cannot be wise all the time, 
and this is a very large country over 
which to keep watch and ward. 
It is perhaps therefore not remark- 
able that on Friday evening the weather 
prophet issued this prediction as a forecast for 
Saturday : 

" New England — The weather will con- 
tinue fair, but with increasing cloudiness dur- 
ing the day; possibly local showers at night; 
southerly winds." 

As a matter of fact, it began to rain at 
noon on Saturday, and for twenty-six hours, 
with two or three intermissions of a few 
minutes only, it has continued to rain, with a 
heavy wind — almost or quite a gale, blowing 
from the northeast. My great cistern is over- 
flowing, and deep channels have been worn in 
the inclined driveway, to prevent the increase 
of which I have been pressed into service as a 
sapper and miner, to reopen lateral drains. 

The rain is driven in gusts, sometimes 
nearly in horizontal lines, carrying with it 
such leaves as have been sufficiently loosened 

205 



A FAIR DAY 

from the branches to yield to its pressure, with 
which the fields are becoming thickly strewn, 
while many have been driven with such force 
against the house as to have firmly attached 
themselves to my eastern wall. Most of the 
time I seem to be in the midst of the clouds, 
very coarse wet clouds, indeed; and then the 
rain slackens, and I see denser clouds trailing 
their draggled skirts over the valley, or the 
hills beyond. 

Though it is well toward mid-October the 
fields are very green, and the trees also for the 
most part, but with yellow and brown en- 
croaching here and there, and now and then a 
brighter hue, especially in the lower portion 
of the valley where the swamp maples (were 
the sun to gleam upon them) would shine out 
resplendent in a burst of scarlet and crimson. 

When for a moment this morning it seemed 
that the cloud canopy might break away, the 
nearer slopes of Talcott Mountain suddenly 
showed an effect emulating that of a gorgeous 
flower garden ; the deep-toned evergreens over- 
hanging the Pilgrim's Path serving as a foil 
for the profusion of color upon the deciduous 
trees. 

Whereas the preceding south wind was icy 
cold, by a singular perverseness of nature this 
present blast from the north and east is mild 
and soft. Yesterday furnished a fair excuse 
for — nay, demanded as a necessity — that blaz- 

206 



A FAIR DAY 

ing hearth which is the very soul of home ; but 
now, I am afraid that there is no such justifi- 
cation for the fire-worshiper, and the mild- 
ness of the temperature compels endurance of 
the dullness and dreariness of the scene. 

The wind and the rain have brought the 
nuts rattling to the ground, and adventurous 
hunters have already laid in an ample store. 
This is not nutting as I remember it in the old 
boarding-school days, when everything was 
couleur-de-rose! I recall the autumn " nut- 
ting privileges " as the very center of the 
happy hours of youth. 

We made our calculations long in advance, 
and surreptitiously obtained knowledge of the 
most promising localities. There were wal- 
nuts, and butternuts, and shellbarks, chestnuts 
and hazelnuts to be had, but I remember es- 
pecially the occasions devoted to the shell- 
barks and the hazelnuts. The former grew 
in the woods, or along the creek in the valley ; 
the latter upon special hillsides. Before the 
time likely to be selected (a holiday or half- 
holiday called a " privilege," granted for the 
purpose) we had formed partnerships, or 
divided into companies, each striving to corral 
at least one swift runner, and then when the 
signal was given, it was — ho, for the harvest 
field! 

It was not so easy to appropriate a definite 
number of hazel bushes as to claim a definite 

207 



A FAIR DAY 

walnut tree or shellbark tree, but still some- 
thing could be done in this, and the " hazel 
privilege " was the time of greatest enjoyment, 
at least for me. A bright clear day was 
always selected, and were it only the delight of 
tramping through the rustling leaves, where 
the hillside here and there opened over the 
valley, the sun gleaming through the thinning 
foliage and lying warm upon the fresh carpet, 
it were a delight and a joy forever. 

Do boys find pleasure in such simple things 
in these modern days, I wonder? Perhaps I 
ought to be ashamed to confess to such low 
tastes, and it may not be an adequate ex- 
tenuation that the royal year was culminating 
in a glory of color, marking in softening 
shades valley and hillside to the farthest reach 
of the eye; that the pure intoxicating air 
stirred the crisp leaves and those just fallen, 
among which we shuffled for the mere pleasure 
of their crackling response, and here and there 
a hare or a squirrel sprang, or a partridge 
whirred at our approach; while over all great 
argosies of cloud floated in a sea of sky so 
clear as to show in truth illimitable depths. 
Let it only be said deprecatingly that we were 
so young, so very young ; so young indeed that 
the fairy finger of old Mother Nature, then 
laid upon our impressible spirits, left thereon 
an indelible sign and token that we belonged 
to her fellowship. 

208 



A FAIR DAY 

But let me look at the thermometer. It is 
only 66° in the study and it should be 68° ; 
the deuce is between us. I am sure that I 
need a fire on the hearth, else dire calamities 
impend. Ah! that is something like! How 
the bits of pine flare and the larger wood 
crackles and sputters, startling poor Kitti- 
wink, and almost frightening him out of his 
wits! The logs are still damp, for they have 
but recently been brought in from the shelter 
of the wood under the ledge, and have never 
basked freely in the broad sunlight. The 
tongues of flame diminish as the dry wood is 
consumed; there is a hissing sound as of es- 
caping steam, and gray smoke drifts up the 
chimney and reappears outside the windows, 
falling to the ground, for the barometer is 
very low. Presently the wood will have dried 
out sufficiently to burn more freely. Mean- 
while Kittiwink has subsided upon his ac- 
customed cushion in the big armchair at the 
end of the mantelpiece, and with his nose 
buried between his forepaws and his forehead 
resting upon them, is sleeping the sleep of the 
just. I see that he is a diaphragm breather, 
as I am told that all babies are, however far 
they may be led astray afterward, and although 
his throat and chest appear motionless, his 
loins and abdomen have a strong and rhythmic 
rise and fall. Now he hears a door closing in 
another part of the cottage, rises into a sitting 

209 



A FAIR DAY 

posture without opening his eyes, stretches 
himself, and then again cuddles down to 
rest. 

What a blessing it is that the fire does not 
continue to burn brightly and steadily ! Think 
what a loss there would be, if we had no op- 
portunity to stir it and poke it, pull this log 
forward, and push that one back, and generally 
indulge in all sorts of experiments. Every 
way makes our game, and the embers glow 
again, and the flame springs up, and like a liv- 
ing thing curls around the hissing fuel. 

Is there any wonder that men should be 
fire-worshipers? I think the wonder is that 
they should not be so. One falls to musing 
as he sits in an easy-chair watching the flame, 
and thinking how, month by month, these 
many years cell has been added to cell and fiber 
to fiber; how the essence of the rock and the 
essence of the water and the essence of the air 
have collaborated in building up this harsh and 
rugged trunk, which now in as mysterious 
fashion unfolds itself and soars aloft, exhal- 
ing with light and heat into the infinite from 
whence it came. 

I have been beguiling the stormy hours with 
" L'Homme qui Rit " — lazily, in the English, 
partly because I have it in the house only in 
that form, partly because, to tell the truth, 
the French of Victor Hugo is not so easy as 
some for a man whose French is only rough 

210 



A FAIR DAY 

and ready, and I am not in the humor for 
much work. 

Victor Hugo is a poet rather than a novel- 
ist. His images pile up around him until he is 
submerged. As an artist it must be said that 
he " niggles." If I may for a moment com- 
pare great things with little, he is a poet in 
somewhat the same school as Walt Whitman. 
No! hardly that. Whitman — pace, all ye 
his admirers — always niggles. He is the poet 
of the index (considering the character of 
many of his poems, one might say, of the Index 
Expurgatorius), of the catalogue raisonne. 
Victor Hugo is much more than that, for he 
is a great writer — really great. He overloads 
his brush; he introduces disquisitions which 
are not pertinent; he winds and twists and 
travels all around Robin" Hood's barn; he 
sometimes builds so many houses that it is im- 
possible to see the town ; but he has himself 
seen the town, and he knows what is in it, and 
in the houses as well, and manages to give you 
a very clear perception of it after all. There 
is little that he does not see, and in the im- 
mense profusion you are pretty sure to dis- 
cover that which is your own, and find your 
characteristic note ringing out amid the hub- 
bub. 

But how he does load his canvas! He 
paints impasto, and uses the palette-knife. 
And it is in the modern fashion of laying on 

211 



A FAIR DAY 

raw color, and no half tints. He is just a 
little langtoetltg sometimes, perhaps, — you are 
fatigued, partly by his excess of color, partly 
by his discursiveness, but just when you are 
beginning to doze off, you wake up with a 
start, and find live creatures all about you. 

Hour has passed after hour; the dark day 
has given way to dark night ; the fire smolders 
on the hearth, but with bright coals glowing 
amid the ashes; and the heavy drops falling 
from the roof indicate that the " fair " 
weather still continues, with a good prospect 
of lasting into another day. 



212 



XXX 

LAMB'S TALES 

" Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep — 
Where shall she go to find them ? 
Let them alone and they'll come home 
With all their tails behind them." 

MY friend Daphnis Patchouli, a late, 
very late, descendant of the well- 
remembered Tityrus T. of that 
name, to whom I have heretofore 
referred, has frequently expressed to me hi? 
surprise that the abandoned farms of which we 
hear so much, and other little-used territory 
in these New-England States, should not be 
employed in sheep husbandry. He points out 
to me numberless stony hillsides, partly 
covered with more or less worthless timber 
and partly lying open to the sun — in the latter 
case bearing a fair growth of what by courtesy 
may be called grasses, 

" And visited all night by troops of stars 

Or when they climb the sky or whenthey sink, " 

and by little else. He also calls my attention 
to many hundred square miles of open country, 

213 



LAMB'S TALES 

upon which well-meaning farmers are fight- 
ing a losing battle for the world's markets 
with those who are despoiling the Western 
prairies of the treasures of their rich soil, 
seconded in this commendable enterprise by the 
magnificent railway kings. And, becoming 
bolder, he casts an admiring glance over my 
green mountain meadow, and as my eye fol- 
lows his he insinuatingly asks how many years 
it will be before I recover the cost of seeding 
it down to grass last season. 

And when I reply deprecatingly that the 
market is said to be full of Western hay, and 
that the bicycles will not eat any, either of the 
domestic or of the imported article, and that I 
think that I shall get square upon the account 
of my plowing and harrowing and fertilizing 
and seeding in about six years, if I am very 
fortunate, he smiles a most peculiar and most 
exasperating smile. 

And then he pictures these hills and fields 
studded over with flocks of browsing sheep, 
and asks me to 

" See the young lambs, how brisk and gay 
On the green grass they skip and play," 

and that sort of thing from the primer up. 
And waxing eloquent, as the vision fills the 
eyes of his spirit (that's right, isn't it? — or 
is the spirit a Polyphemus, with only one 
optic — " the spiritual eye "?) and he feels the 

214 



LAMB'S TALES 

blood of his forefathers stirred within him to 
that degree of placidity which marked their 
race, he calls upon me to imagine myself with 
a well-formed crook by my side, reclining on 
the slumbering hillside, in busy idleness, con- 
templating the floating clouds above me or 
playing upon an oaten pipe 

" In notes, with many a winding bout, 
Of linked sweetness long drawn out." 

to any or all of the Amaryllidaceae. 

And this touches me to the quick, for if 
there is any sentiment which appeals to the 
natural man within me, it is the sentiment of 
quiescence. Let the world wag! 

Now, I don't think that Patchouli knows 
anything about the tariff on wool, whether 
it is on or whether it is off, and I am sure 
that he could not tell whether there is money 
in sheep or not, for he never analyzed them. 
He has confessed to me that he has a penchant 
for a very tender, juicy chop, provided he did 
not know the lamb from which it came, but 
this is about the limit as to ultimate purposes 
to which his knowledge extends. 

He certainly showed a vein of the practical, 
so far as his lights went, in discussing the 
reason which has been alleged for the dis- 
continuance of sheep-raising in this neighbor- 
hood ; that the sheep were frequently worried 

215 



LAMB'S TALES 

by dogs, and that sometimes a dog would kill 
twenty or more of them in a night. Said he : 

" Is not the owner of the dog responsible 
for any sheep which he may kill ? " 

" Yes," was the reply, " but there are many 
dogs prowling around, the ownership of which 
is unknown or unacknowledged." 

" Is there any difficulty in enforcing a re- 
quirement that the owner of a dog shall put 
upon him some unmistakable distinguishing 
mark? " 

" None whatever." 

" How long would it take your people, 
whose fondness for killing is so well known, 
to shoot every dog found without such a dis- 
tinguishing mark? " 

I was lying in wait for him, and here I had 
him at last. 

"Aha! Mark how plain a tale shall put 
you down; that would be something useful; 
there would be no sport in that." 

But, victorious as I was in this verbal con- 
test, his frequent suggestions led me to think- 
ing, and the more I thought the more I was 
tempted to try an experiment. But experi- 
ments are my bete noire. I am always trying 
experiments, and through them I have gained 
much experience, though little else. It would 
be in keeping with my text to say that I had 
gone out for wool and come home shorn. I 
have, however, learned to deliberate before 

216 



LAMB'S TALES 

embarking on a new enterprise and to begin 
on a small scale. It must be confessed that 
this is not invariably a reliable method. You 
will remember the story of the Indian who, 
having heard much of the softness of a feather 
bed, took a feather and laid it upon a rock, 
and, after tossing upon it through the night, 
reported that if one feather was as hard as 
that, he did not want a whole bedticking full 
of them. 

Being bent upon the experiment, but like- 
wise haying a frugal mind, I consulted my 
neighbors. Now I ought to say that I rarely 
have need to consult my neighbors about any- 
thing, being usually fully advised upon all 
points of interest before I have really become 
aware that I need assistance. That the advice 
received is not always homogeneous is true. I 
frequently need to remember the instruction 
given to a wayfarer regarding the road upon 
which he was traveling: "When you have 
gone so far you will find the road divide into 
two branches ; don't take both of them." 

Now, was it in this instance that my neigh- 
bors, with malicious intent, desired to take ad- 
vantage of my urban ingenuousness, or was it 
that their minds were preoccupied with sym- 
pathy touching my ill-fated well and useless 
pump, that they advised me to begin cautiously 
and make my first experiment with a hydraulic 
ram? This species, said they, is hydropathic; 

217 



LAMB'S TALES 

moreover, it is stationary and will not disturb 
your garden or other appurtenances. It is 
said that a wink is as good as a kick to a wise 
man, and, desiring to gain, if I might not yet 
aspire merely to retain, a reputation for wis- 
dom, I was willing to give them the benefit 
of the doubt, and assume that we had been 
talking of the water supply all the time, and 
so I listened. 

Do you know what a hydraulic ram is ? A 
hydraulic ram is a mysterious creature which, 
being properly entreated and fed with a large 
amount of water, will complacently in return 
send a small amount of water to the point 
where you wish to use it. Now this descrip- 
tion does not seem to define it as very different 
from certain other servants of man, but never- 
theless it is quite different in operation. Suf- 
fice it to say that you set a big stream of water 
to running in such a way as to compress into 
a small chamber, the lungs of the creature, 
as it were, a body of air. The air is long- 
suffering, but at length rebels, and in its 
struggle to escape it sends a small stream of 
water climbing up hill. Its power of re- 
sistance being soon exhausted, it yields to 
renewed pressure until this pressure again 
becomes too great to be endured, and so on ad 
infinitum if nothing breaks and nothing wears 
out and the roots do not fill up your pipes. 

This looked very nice, and I said : " Yes, 

218 



LAMB'S TALES 

you may have your joke, and I will have my 
hydraulic ram, and I will lie on my back (if 
I can find a dry spot) and play upon my oaten 
pipe and watch my ram as it sputters and 
spouts, instead of going down into the cellar 
and pumping water up from the cistern, ha, 
ha!" 

So much determined, I was reminded of 
Mrs. Glass's recipe, " First catch your hare." 
Where was my stream of water ? Well, there 
are more ways than one of doing many things. 
Down in my old pasture, which is no longer 
used as a pasture, at the foot of a slope upon 
the lower portion of which are three or four 
shallow wells, in which certain of my neigh- 
bors are said to have a prescriptive right, is a 
marsh or swamp sixty or eighty feet lower 
than the cottage. A marsh is always an in- 
teresting place, especially to an artist, and also 
to one who is fond of wild flowers, for here he 
will find them in the greatest profusion and 
variety. And then what possibilities of snakes 
are here, not to speak of muskrats and other 
wild fowl! 

My marsh was always full of standing 
water, even in the driest season, and during 
and after heavy rains it shed a torrent, but 
there was no constant brook perceptible. At 
first I made modest demands upon it. I had 
two or three shallow pools dug at slightly dif- 
ferent levels, that nature might be refreshed 

219 



LAMB'S TALES 

by looking upon the reflection of herself as in a 
glass, with open cuts running from the upper 
to the lower. In doing this I discovered that 
instead of a deep deposit of loam there was 
merely a thin coating of black earth over a bed 
of blue clay, and through my little conduits 
ran a small stream of water, even during the 
September drought. 

At the end of the season I was encouraged 
by this fact to make a bolder demand, and I 
said to myself that if I should run a drain 
eighteen inches deep for one hundred feet or 
so along the foot of the slope I should in- 
tercept all the water which was hastening or 
lazily loitering, as the case might be, down 
from the high land into the marsh; that the 
various contributions, gathered into a suf- 
ficient stream, could be conducted by covered 
tiles into a tank, and from this tank a drive 
pipe could be led into a pit, to the ram, from 
which pit, by other buried tiles, the waste 
water could be generously deposited in the 
middle of my neighbor's lot. 

And so it was ordered. And soon a goodly 
stream (on a small scale) was running 
through my upper drain, and off, by a tem- 
porary outlet, into the lower pools. 

But I have a very good friend who is a 
street sweeper in New- York, the boss of the 
gang (baas, as the Dutch had it), [alas! poor 
Waring!] who knows more about draining 

220 



LAMB'S TALES 

than anybody else, and he writes me that my 
drains should go eighteen inches deeper, and 
the tank and pit accordin'. 

And that is the reason why, encased in big 
rubber boots, I have been engaged in the rain 
this morning in fixing grades and running 
lines. The laborers were frightened away 
by the storm, which, it is fair to say, was 
then heavier than during the period in which 
I was out in it. But I find that day la- 
borers not infrequently become discouraged 
early. 

Sooth to say, the digging in which they are 
engaged is not an agreeable occupation. The 
earth — in part a stiff clay — has been com- 
pletely saturated with water, and the numer- 
ous stones, large and small, which are im- 
bedded in it are held as a stone is held by the 
wet leather of a boy's " sucker," and yield to 
solicitation at last, if they do yield, with a 
weary sigh. But for the most part, the earth 
is a close, coarse gravel, which has not been 
rolled sufficiently to become rounded, in which 
the blows of the pick-ax make a weak im- 
pression, while the men stand in running 
water of anything but a comfortable tem- 
perature. 

The long and sometimes heavy rain has 
turned my tiny stream into a brawling brook, 
a small percentage only of which would supply 
my modest demands. And I am sanguine that 

221 



LAMB'S TALES 

this percentage will be mine, under all but the 
most trying conditions of our particularly try- 
ing climate. And should I be successful in this 
case, what may I not be encouraged to at- 
tempt? Then, revenons a nos moutons. 



222 



XXXI 

THE WASPS 

I HAVE written of my experiences with 
the wasps in the early autumn. As the 
season grew colder, because of my vigor- 
ous hunting, and, as I now suppose, for 
other reasons, they gradually disappeared, and 
for some time none were visible. Then came 
certain warm days when, upon going again to 
the loft, I found them literally swarming. 
For a while I tried my old methods, but in 
vain. It was like Mrs. Partington's effort to 
sweep back the ocean with a broom, and I 
was shortly driven from the field. 

For some days I did not venture into the 
loft, and I began to wonder whether I might 
not finally be wholly driven from the premises 
by the increasing hosts. I had never heard of 
any such event happening, but neither had I 
ever heard of such an onslaught as I had 
already experienced. Stepping upon the lad- 
der in the morning, I would slightly raise the 
scuttle and peep through, but as quickly close 
it again lest the enemy should take to the 
offensive. 

I discovered, however, that when night fell, 

223 



THE WASPS 

and especially when the temperature became 
somewhat lower, they would cease flying, and 
congregate in clusters upon the glass or upon 
the under side of the roof. This gave me 
some courage. And then one happy day a 
neighbor suggested to me to try upon them a 
certain insect powder. I shall not advertise 
its name here, but if anyone desires informa- 
tion concerning it, I shall be most happy to 
respond. Suffice it that I procured some of 
the powder, and taking advantage of a period 
when my opponents were sluggishly reposing, 
administered the dose. The effect was 
magical. It did not kill them instantly, but 
their doom was sealed. Dismay entered their 
ranks, and their only effort w T as to flee, but 
no escape was possible after the deadly powder 
had been inhaled. Day after day I followed 
up the attack, and morning after morning I 
swept up the victims by the hundreds. 

After a number of days the re-enforcements 
seemed to fail, and then, the weather growing 
colder, the supply wholly ceased. With the 
advancing spring I shall expect new tribes 
from their hiding places, but I fear them not. 
With my powder and my rubber bellows I 
am master of the situation, and it is not the 
Polistes rubiginosus which will drive me from 
Underledge. 



224 



XXXII 

WATER, WATER EVERY- 
WHERE 

HEAVEN is occasionally lavish of its 
bounties when we least need them, 
and sparing, not to say niggardly, 
when they would be most accepta- 
ble. I have even heard wonder expressed 
that the sun should shine in the day, when 
it is so light, and not at night, when we 
are so greatly in want of it. I felt this quite 
poignantly this evening, as I crossed the moun- 
tain meadow. When I reached the entrance 
from the highway, I could discern some ob- 
jects faintly outlined against the sky which I 
knew must be the posts on either side, and 
away ahead, a dim light, not the usual bright 
ray, told me the direction of the cottage. 
Some distance to the right, a denser blackness 
indicated the general position of the ledge. 
Somewhere above I imagined the sky to be, 
and somewhere beneath I supposed was the 
earth, for I stood upon something, but I could 
distinguish nothing by sight, and was com- 
pelled to feel my way with my feet over the 
soggy turf. 

225 



WATER EVERYWHERE 

In the direction of the valley I saw lights of 
varying degrees of brightness glimmering 
through the fog. This did not appear to be 
so dense as it had been during the day, but was 
simply an all-pervading blackness. 

It was yesterday that it rained — and how it 
did rain! From long before daylight (and 
the daylight did not amount to much) until 
far into the night, it beat upon the earth and 
upon the remaining snow, and it poured over 
the cliffs and over the frozen but thawing 
slopes, gaining volume as it concentrated in 
the hollows and plunged toward the valley. 
I shall say nothing about the cellar, or how, 
the carefully arranged ditches and drains hav- 
ing comfortably frozen up, the streams com- 
bined to pour down through the cellar bulk- 
head, the door of which would not close tight 
because of much swelling, — fortunately to be 
immediately carried off at the opposite corner. 
It was a happy accident that the builder had 
been brought up in the school of that modern 
Greek who, what time there happened an 
unfortunate giving way in the bow of his boot, 
wisely made an equivalent aperture through 
the stern, so that the water which " ran in at 
the toe ran immejetly out at the heel." In- 
cidents of this character are of the nature of 
those accidents which will happen in the best 
regulated families, and should only be men- 
tioned in the strictest confidence. 

226 



WATER EVERYWHERE 

Near Sunset Rock, a miniature cataract, 
like that upon a mountain stream, fell over 
the ledge into the ice-covered road, upon which 
I staggered and slipped at the imminent risk 
of my old bones in trying to ascertain the 
source of the torrent. 

And then the river went out over the low- 
lands. Already yesterday afternoon we had 
heard that trouble had occurred along the 
Pequabuck, and that one of our neighbors had 
found the bridge gone, and had been com- 
pelled to cut his horse loose, as he crossed at 
" Eight Acre." But the water of the Tunxis 
had only begun to rise, and we could not 
expect that it would reach its full height be- 
fore this morning. And the morning broke, 
or perhaps I ought to say, bent, and the atmos- 
phere was so constructed that it might have 
been cut into comfortable slices, and my neigh- 
bor's old apple trees only indicated their posi- 
tion by an almost imaginary tone in the 
grayness which enveloped us. And there was 
no valley, but only a vast sea of colorless 
cloud, in which we were quietly floating. 

I hoped to look out during the day upon the 
great lake, which is one of our luxuries re- 
served for special occasions, but, though the 
presumptive line between the visible and the 
invisible varied a little from hour to hour, it 
never traveled further than about two hun- 
dred yards away. And so, as the mountain 

227 



WATER EVERYWHERE 

(alias the valley) would not come to Moham- 
med, Mohammed had to go to the mountain, 
and I paddled through the mud to the shore of 
the new-made sea, and formed one of the 
company gathered to look out over the waters 
and endeavor to penetrate the veil which 
shrouded them and closed the view on every 
side. And I was told that the water was fall- 
ing, but that it had been a half-inch higher 
than in the great flood of 1854, tne highest 
upon record (this was probably an under- 
estimate) ; and I was shown a nail partly 
driven into a telegraph pole at the side of the 
road, which, I was informed, marked the 
height reached on that former important oc- 
casion. And it did not occur to me to wonder 
how that telegraph pole had preserved its 
singular freshness through these forty years, 
or why the weather and the boys had so 
leniently treated that nail, which was so 
clearly in evidence. 

Still, these little mysteries did not matter 
in the least, but, on the contrary, were in keep- 
ing with the nature of the scene. For it was 
a weird scene, indeed, which gained marvel- 
ously in interest and attractiveness because we 
could see so little of it, and because it was 
curtained so beautifully by the dense fog. 
Far away over the lowlands we had reason to 
know that cellars were flooded, and perhaps 
worse; that some hundreds of bushels of pota- 

228 



WATER EVERYWHERE 

toes were under water at the town farm, from 
which the animals had been removed earlier in 
the day, and so on, but we had no reason to 
suppose that the life of anyone was in danger, 
as had been sometimes the case in former years, 
before this trick of the river had become 
familiar, as history relates. For are there not 
accounts remaining of the hearing of voices of 
those in peril, and of the manning of boats, 
and of successful attempts at rescue, and of 
some that were not successful ? The town has 
struggled for more than two hundred years to 
maintain its roads across the valley, and they 
are there sure enough, though to-day the one 
at the south end, the stage road to the station, 
is far beneath the water for nearly or quite a 
mile, and here at the north end we know, 
though we cannot see much, that the red 
bridge forms a little islet, beyond which the 
highway dips immediately into the water, to 
reappear only far away, beyond Round Hill. 
And alongside, and meandering over it in the 
most exasperating way possible, is the line of 
trolley rails — only you would have to fish for 
them. 

Of the only house in view from the point 
where the company was collected, which was 
partly submerged, it was whispered that it was 
used as a place in which to stow ardent spirits, 
and whisky-and-water seemed a very appro- 
priate combination, and even less likely to 

229 



WATER EVERYWHERE 

prove harmful under these circumstances than 
under others which might be imagined. 

Now and then a canoe or a rowboat would 
slowly take form and emerge from nowhere in 
particular, generally filled with frolicking 
lads; and once a round dark object on the sur- 
face of the water gradually revealed itself as 
the head of a dog, which was paddling for the 
shore, but looked as if the water were his 
natural element. 

But the great and indescribable beauty of 
the picture was in the trees, which loomed 
through the fog in every degree of softness of 
outline, until in the distance they became an 
evanescent blur. Excepting where the cur- 
rent rippled against the iron rails of the trolley 
road, as they lost themselves in the tide, the 
surface was as smooth as a mirror, and in this 
every detail of near or distant tree was re- 
flected with absolute fidelity, and, since the 
gray of the water faded into the gray of the 
fog without any line of demarcation, the 
firmament under the waters could only be 
distinguished from the firmament above the 
waters by the angle of reflection. 

And all this water we are going to waste 
by sending it down into the Quonehtacut, and 
so into the Sound, where it will lose itself in 
the briny deep, which is full enough already. 



230 



XXXIII 
ONLY THE STARS 

FROM my watch tower on the hill 
I see so much sky that to behold it 
would, I am sure, make the child of 
a city court open wide its eyes with 
wonder. It is real sky, too, with a real sun in it 
sometimes, and clouds that float grandly across 
its vault ; now great snowballs and now moun- 
tains of cloud, Ossa piled upon Pelion; and 
then long lines stretching from verge to verge, 
or flocks of sheep, or great flights of birds, or 
thin wisps and curls of silken fiber. And at 
night there are stars in it, such hosts of stars, 
glittering and twinkling in the vast firmament. 
And I try to picture the light of these stars 
as it speeds on its wonderful journey through 
space — light which left its home in other years 
and has been ever since flying onward toward 
me at the rate of nearly two hundred thousand 
miles a second. Endeavor to realize it — yet 
I am sure that the endeavor will be vain ! 

Perhaps the star which was the source of 
this light became darkened long ago; yet still 
plunging forward through vacancy, or that 
which we esteem such, at a speed which we 

231 



ONLY THE STARS 

can name in figures, but which we cannot in 
the least appreciate, a speed ten million times 
as great as that of the fastest railroad train, 
the shell of light of the vanished orb, sur- 
rounding it upon every side as a perfect sphere, 
expands, to break at length upon our earth or 
upon whatsoever other infinitesimal particle 
of the sublime universe it may happen upon in 
its course. Like a soap bubble, but instead 
of bursting it continues to enlarge, and to en- 
large as though distended by an explosion of 
giant power whose force is unceasing, and to 
advance at a rate compared with which that 
caused by an explosion would be the merest 
child's play. For the light spreads fifty thou- 
sand times as fast as the impulse produced by 
the ignition of gun cotton. 

But how can we picture these things so as 
to bring any definite vision before our minds? 
We look out upon the " quiet stars " which 
are having their own fling through space at a 
rate probably of many thousand miles per 
minute, but at a distance from us which is so 
great that any motion whatever is only per- 
ceptible after the lapse of very many years. 
We do not see them as they are, but as they 
were long, long ago. This much, at least, 
we know : it is not the stars as they are at pres- 
ent that we see, but the stars of the past. 
The same stars may be there now, but only 
long years hence we, or those who come after 

232 



ONLY THE STARS 

us, will see them as they now are. We are 
reading the history of the past, the history of 
the universe, day by day, in order as it was 
written, but it is ancient history. 

On more than one occasion the men that 
scan the heavens have seen a star appear, or 
rapidly increase to enormous brightness, and 
then fade into insignificance. This, too, was 
a story of the past. They read the tale in the 
message brought by the light as they might 
have read it in a newspaper of years gone by. 
The calamity, whatever it may have been, was 
not of to-day. Do not try to dodge the light- 
ning when you hear the thunder. It had run 
its course and performed its work before the 
first muttering of the message throbbed upon 
your ear. But sound is very slow; it takes 
nearly five seconds to travel a mile. Yet, 
when I hear an express locomotive rumbling 
over yonder bridge and raise my eyes, it has 
already safely crossed the river and proceeded 
upon its way. 

A prejudice is frequently expressed by 
scientic men, or perhaps I should rather say 
by pseudo-scientific men, against " popular 
science," by which I understand to be meant 
information upon various themes which is cast 
in a form intended to interest the general 
public, and not stated in the strictest scientific 
manner, with courses and distances. I can 
never resist an opportunity to express the 

233 



ONLY THE STARS 

strongest possible dissent from this attitude. 
Illimitable as is the field of that which prob- 
ably must remain unknown, and almost bound- 
less as is the field of that which might be 
known, of recorded knowledge the extent is so 
vast that but scraps and fragments can ever 
come within the ken of any one individual, 
even though he have a capacity like that of 
Herbert Spencer. And for the ordinary man 
or woman of the world (and a true man or 
woman of the world is, I imagine, what most 
of us are ambitious to be), it is wholly im- 
possible to be fully instructed in even one of 
the sciences which together form the sum of 
human knowledge. 

We have our own work to do, our own part 
to play. Excepting for the specialist, it is not 
important, however interesting, yes, fascinat- 
ing, it might be, that all that is knowable upon 
any subject should be learned and assimilated. 
But it is of the utmost importance that not 
merely the casual individual, but everyone of 
sufficient intellectual capacity to catch a glim- 
mering idea of anything beyond the bare bones 
of existence, should gain some conception of 
the awe-full universe that he lives in, and alike 
of the paradox of his dignity as a man and his 
utter insignificance. "I am a Roman citi- 
zen! " was once a proud cry; " I am a citizen 
of the world ! " should be a prouder cry, but 
worthless to him who has nothing to show 

234 



ONLY THE STARS 

pertaining to his citizenship, either of know- 
ing, of being, or of doing; or of all three of 
these, which comprise the whole duty of man. 

For anything beyond the mere rags and 
tatters of life, the awakening and the educa- 
tion of the imagination are essential. Ah ! let 
me once more draw my bow across this string ; 
like the G string of Paganini's violin, it is 
tuned to respond to all the music of the 
spheres. Not until the beauty of the world 
and the wonder of life impress the soul with 
their immeasurable vastness, and not until 
these suggest in turn a wonder and a beauty 
compared with which they are but as the 
alphabet, has life really more than spent its 
childhood. Man does not live by bread alone ; 
if he did, the shorter his life, the better would 
it be for all hands. To be a man, he must 
live in the spirit as well as in the flesh. 

But to do this it .is not necessary that he 
should pack his memory with complete 
schemes of genera and species, or with tables 
of logarithms or co-efficients. He need not 
know all the data in relation to the precession 
of the equinoxes, or every possible speculation 
regarding the fourth dimension of space. If 
his life's work is not that of a classifier, or an 
astronomer, or a mathematician, it is not 
necessary for him to know these. But if he 
be a man of the world, to take what may be 
accounted an extreme example, it will not by 

235 



ONLY THE STARS 

any means be valueless to him to know what 
is meant by the fourth dimension of space, and 
to learn that, whereas we have been ac- 
customed to reckon that we have compassed 
all of form by taking account of length, 
breadth, and thickness, some of the most acute 
reasoners of the age have thought it not un- 
profitable to speculate upon the possibility of 
another, an unknown, dimension, and to carry 
far the calculations which embody such an 
hypothesis. 

" There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
Than are dreamed of in your philosophy." 

How it is possible for the man whose vision 
extends only to the things and the relations 
which immediately surround him to have any 
broad or just views of sociology, of politics, of 
religion, of anything? One may, indeed, have 
wide knowledge, and his views may yet be 
worthless, but at least this may be said truly: 
that unless one can gain a point of vantage 
where he may rid himself of forced and false 
perspective, his views are liable to be as dis- 
torted and misleading as those sometimes ap- 
pear to be which were taken in a camera with 
a wide-angled lens. 

Which reminds me that I was looking out 
from my veranda upon " the cold light of 
stars," and intended, in a moment, to write of 
quite a different matter. But that must now 
pass over unto a more convenient season. 

236 



ONLY THE STARS 

" The stars, in their courses, fought against 
Sisera," and they have fought against me, and 
compelled me, as the angel that met Jacob in 
the way, to wrestle with them. But again the 
story of Antaeus comes to mind; while the 
struggle continued, each time that he was 
thrown to the ground he arose with renewed 
strength. Perhaps, occasionally, our brains 
whirl a little, and we are inclined to say: 
" Such knowledge is too wonderful for me ; 
it is high, I cannot attain unto it." If it 
come but to a humble thought such as this, it 
is an awakening and a chastening which may 
be salutary. But the truer discipleship is to 
think the creative thoughts over again. 

Remember, however, that knowledge in 
itself is nothing worth; it is the spirit that 
quickeneth. Beware of cherishing mere life- 
less bones and toneless catalogues. 

" These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights 
That give a name to every fixdd star 
Have no more profit of their shining nights 

Than those that walk and wot not what they are." 

Or they may not have. It is the " stream 
of tendency " that gives life to the dry bones 
and voice to the dumb catalogues, and it is the 
vitalizing dip into the refreshing tide of that 
stream which one must feel. 

And so, good-night! 

" To all, co each, a fair good-night, 

And pleasing dreams, and slumbers light." 

237 



XXXIV 

THE LIGHTS IN THE 
VALLEY 

I SUPPOSE that one might be well con- 
tent, especially if he be a denizen of the 
city, with a chance opportunity to trace 
the glittering light of stars from the 
zenith to the horizon. But at Underledge 
we follow it still farther downward into the 
underworld, and on a moonless night it is 
sometimes difficult to perceive where the 
heavenly lights end and the earthly ones 
begin. Most of these lower ones are fixed 
stars, yet indicate orbs which I assume are 
inhabited, whatever may be the case with the 
other fixed stars and the planets. Occa- 
sionally a meteor passes slowly across in front 
of me, and at length disappears. Perhaps 
someone might call it the headlight of a trolley 
car, but what know I? I am told that I 
cannot know anything save through my phys- 
ical senses, and what have my physical senses 
to do with anything far away out there in 
space? Is it not in fact within me, the thing 
which I see? 

I have recently written about waves, of 

238 



LIGHTS IN THE VALLEY 

which I know nothing, in a medium called 
ether, of the existence of which I have no 
proof. I wrote as if there were but a single 
series of these waves, and it seemed very 
simple, if wholly beyond actual comprehension. 
But suppose instead of one series of light 
waves, we try to comprehend an infinite num- 
ber of series, simultaneous, meeting and cross- 
ing each other in every conceivable direction 
from every existent particle emitting or re- 
flecting light? This may contribute to the 
luminosity in fact, but it does not contribute 
to the luminosity in thought. And suppose we 
add to these the electric or magnetic waves, 
and the waves of radiant heat, and the X-rays 
of Roentgen, and those that follow, all these 
in like manner acting at cross purposes in the 
mysterious ether? Have we not by this time 
built up a tolerably composite problem with 
which to deal? 

I do not suggest this because I wish to com- 
pete with the Rev. Jasper in denying a 
generally accepted scientific hypothesis in 
favor of one that has been exploded, or of one 
newly manufactured by myself. I simply 
wish to call attention to the ease with which 
we are apt to rest satisfied with names — with 
expressions — with theories, and feel that we 
are very wise. " That man ? Oh, that is 
John Smith." " Why do the orbs remain 
poised in space, revolving around their axes 

239 



LIGHTS IN THE VALLEY 

and around each other? They are held there 
by the attraction of gravitation: haven't you 
learned that yet?" " What causes our per- 
ception of light? Waves of a certain ampli- 
tude and rapidity, which, passing through 
the imponderable ether, impinge upon the 
nerve of sight." Excellent and admirable, 
and doubtless true in a sense, but what 
then? 

Are we any nearer the heart of things when 
we have asked the questions and have received 
these answers ? Perhaps : I would fain believe 
that we are, but if it be so it can only be 
because our minds are thereby stimulated to 
recognize interactions of force and life which 
are utterly beyond our comprehension, and not 
because we know any better who John Smith 
is in consequence of knowing his name, or 
understand what causes the attraction of 
gravitation, or can figure to ourselves these 
numberless conflicting waves which do not 
conflict, or perceive why they should cause 
vision or produce the other marvelous effects 
of which we are aware. 

The man who can be led to a crass material- 
ism by such considerations as these must be 
weak indeed, and, on the other hand, the man 
who is confirmed in his belief that science is of 
no account, but that all the riches of omni- 
science and infinity are comprised within the 
limits of his twopenny-halfpenny, six-by-nine 

240 



LIGHTS IN THE VALLEY 

traditional creed, is worse than an infidel and 
much more hopeless. 

When we come to base all our important 
hypotheses upon the universal diffusion of an 
imponderable ether, have we not come danger- 
ously near the dividing line between the con- 
ceptions of matter and of spirit? If the ether 
is imponderable and universally diffused, the 
source or medium of all force, — since it is not 
subject to the law of gravitation, it is certainly 
not matter in any ordinary acceptation of that 
term. It if is not matter, is it then spirit? 
Or is there a third department, neither matter 
nor spirit, as Purgatory is claimed to be 
neither Heaven nor Hell? 

There I go again, and simply because a 
trolley car passed across the valley, its great 
monocle staring in front, and blue flashes 
sparkling from time to time on the wire. 
But it is not to be wondered at, for when you 
have harnessed the lightning it seems an ex- 
ceptionally spectacular performance, though, 
in the last analysis, any one thing is not more 
strange than any other thing excepting in the 
sense that it is less familiar. 

But to come down to plain everyday things, 
hills and valleys, and woods and fields, houses 
and people, love and hate, life and death, 
things that we are quite familiar with and 
thoroughly understand, you know! Here I 
sit in my lonely watch tower, and see one by 

241 



LIGHTS IN THE VALLEY 

one the lights appear that mark the household 
gatherings, and I sometimes wonder how 
much real life there is beneath the show of 
life there manifested. I know a little, a very 
little about some of these circles, and what I 
know leads me sometimes to hope that there 
are deeps which I have not fathomed. Some 
of the houses from which these lights gleam, 
have sheltered many generations, and looking 
back over the past, it is difficult to avoid 
imagining that there must still be more life in 
some of those occupants who disappeared long, 
long ago, than now animates those who supply 
their places. 

Yonder, for instance — do you see that light 
gleaming beyond the pasture, and a stone's 
throw down the farther slope? That should 
be the light of the candle upon the study table 
of Dr. Todd, the beloved physician, but alas! 
his familiar form has been under the daisies for 
more than sixty years. Was that the end of 
all? I do not know. But I do know that, 
lacking the ability to accept the dominant faith 
then strenuously held and strongly urged by 
most as of supreme importance, he was yet 
able to win the hearts of all ; to be not merely 
the caretaker of their bodies, but to be bright- 
ness to those who were in gloom, peace to 
those who were perturbed in spirit, rest for the 
weary, sympathy for the sorrowing, a com- 
panion and a friend for those whom loneliness 

242 



LIGHTS IN THE VALLEY 

overcame, a helpful confidant for such as 
needed a listening ear. His violin was his 
own chief solace, and he was so full of music 
that he exhaled an atmosphere of harmony 
wherever he appeared. Even one of whom it 
might truly be said 

" Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, 
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh," 

felt irresistibly the soothing of his presence. 
Where now is that spirit which then was so 
rich, so full, and so helpful? Has it been 
wasted ? 



243 



XXXV 

THE TOWN FARM 

" There's a light in the window for thee, love — 
There's a light in the window for thee. " 

DOWN yonder in the valley, just be- 
I fore you reach the gravelly slope 
upon which grow the pines, a light 
shines through the long evenings to 
which my eye often turns. It represents the 
kinship of the race, the feeling of a common 
humanity, the thoughtfulness of those that 
have for those that have not, the bounty of 
the successful, the industrious, the capable, or 
the fortunate, extended toward the ne'er-do- 
weels, the misfits, those of whom Dame 
Fortune has seen proper to make sport, and 
upon whom she has wreaked her spite. For a 
poor devil of an author it is a sort of beacon 
light showing a gate at the end of the long 
road upon which there are so many turnings, 
which is sometimes so dusty, and so over- 
crowded with rocks of offense and ugly 
morasses. 

With the ordinary disposition to look a gift 
horse in the mouth, one regrets that this refuge 

244 



THE TOWN FARM 

could not have been placed upon a hill so as 
to afford a glimpse of the world here and 
there, of the world that is so beautiful to those 
whose outward eyes are not yet dim, and 
whose inward eyes are not so overloaded with 
memories of the past and apprehensions for 
the future as to be blind to the heavenly and 
the earthly vision. But perhaps the pain 
might be too acute, this looking out upon the 
busy and the happy world. It requires a 
pretty firm nervous grip for the unhappy to 
enjoy thoroughly the happiness and success of 
others. The contrast of the rusting and the 
moldering hulk, half buried in the sand, and 
the graceful craft under snowy canvas, bound- 
ing freely over the summer sea, is almost too 
great. Perhaps the bare walls and the flat 
plain are best. 

I wonder whether, in that last shelter, one 
is permitted the occupancy of a room all by 
himself, and allowed to keep it snug and clean 
and sweet-smelling? Methinks the smell of 
hopeless and helpless and nerveless poverty is 
the worst ill that is to be endured, the deepest 
depth to which one can physically fall. Short 
of that, there is hope. With a sweet breath 
in the nostrils, one might live forever. 

Yes, with but a pleasant odor left, one 
might live again. And really one's needs are 
few: even in the valley one can see the stars, 
and the vast heavenly spaces, and with the 

245 



THE TOWN FARM 

sweet spirit of the past in the soul, and with 
the awful and majestic infinities over one, the 
dream of a greater glory and a greater peace 
might come to enwrap the spirit long buffeted, 
and overworn. 



246 



XXXVI 

THE SENSE (OR THE NON- 
SENSE ?) OF COLOR 

FANDY Saekel has been painting the 
valley from my slope. Strictly speak- 
ing, he has not been painting it red, 
but rather purple. One of his 
studies was begun in front of the fringe of 
wood which in summer masks the ledge, but 
at this season reveals the dry bones of the earth 
protruding at the summit; upon a subsequent 
day, the weather not being wholly accom- 
modating, he started another in my neighbor's 
field just over the line below my pasture, and 
upon this he has worked assiduously during 
several mornings. The choice of a point of 
view was felicitous. Directly in front falls a 
swale with gently sloping sides upon which 
stand ragged old apple trees: upon a swampy 
bit of bottom land are tall brown weeds and 
coarse marsh grass, with two or three 
picturesque elms, fed by the copious moisture: 
between the branches appear ancient roofs and 
chimneys scattered irregularly; while over the 
tops, parts of the intervale show here and 
there, with the ranges of hills off upon the 

247 



THE SENSE OF COLOR 

horizon, and a suggestion of the gap through 
which the Tunxis makes its way from the 
mountains. It is a scene of ideal as well as 
real beauty, and to me, though under most 
lights full of color, the color is ethereal : now, 
in the morning, soft salmon pink upon the 
lower sky, fading into gray-blue above, and 
contrasting gently with blues upon the distant 
mountains, and occasional hints of purple; 
tawny browns and yellows upon the fields and 
slopes, the color of the lion's hide, as my friend 
the good physician says, — blending softly into 
the neutral green of the distant pines; pearly 
blues and grays and soft maroons upon the 
nearer trunks and scattered rocks in the sun- 
light, by which they are projected clearly 
against the golden and yellow browns of the 
grass and weeds. The whole is a symphony 
(that, I believe, is the accepted term, and no- 
where in color more appropriately placed than 
here) of agreeable discords, and quiet har- 
monies, and restful unisons, such as appeal 
most sympathetically to the craving for 
pleasurable repose, and inactive but most real 
gufriebenljeit. One is compelled to use 
strong names to indicate the hues which are 
suggested to the mind, but the names are sharp 
and hard and crude, and for the most part no 
more describe the softly flowing tints than 
word pictures can suggest that mysterious bias 
of the inner man, of which Coleridge sings : 

248 



THE SENSE OF COLOR 

" All thoughts, all passions, all delights, 
Whatever stirs this mortal frame, 
All are but ministers of Love, 
And feed his sacred flame." 

Fandy has a nice and assured touch, and a 
good sense of composition and perspective. 
When I stood beside him as he approached the 
termination of his task, he asked me how I 
liked his picture. In a sort of way I expressed 
my satisfaction with the features of which I 
have just spoken, but added, " I cannot see 
the colors as you have them, — of such intensity 
and showing such strong contrasts." He 
might have replied like Turner — " Don't you 
wish you could ? " but more courteously said 
that if I should see the picture in the house, 
I would not think the colors too bright. To 
this I responded, " Perhaps so," but in truth 
I did not think it. I had seen this kind of 
thing before, many, many times before. I am 
sure that in numerous cases, as in this, it is an 
honest effort after truth in effect : I am equally 
sure that in a vastly greater number of cases 
it is either reckless dissipation in color, or 
merely the utilization for pecuniary reward of 
the " fad " of the period. At its best it is a 
conscientious struggle after the effect en plein 
air, an admirable effort. But the actual re- 
sults are sometimes adapted to make one's 
brain whirl. 

(Indeed, if I may be so indiscreet, I may 

249 



THE SENSE OF COLOR 

reveal the fact that a horse driven by David 
Mapelson positively refused to pass one of 
Fandy's sketches the other day.) 

If Mr. Saekel had replied to me in Turner's 
words, " Don't you wish you could ? " I 
should have been compelled to answer, " No, 
I do not. I was brought up and have been 
nurtured on the sunset and the rainbow; I 
have become attached to these spectacles, and 
have grown old and gray under them, and am 
not strong enough to surrender them now. 
Your palette is almost spent; what have you 
left with which to paint me these?" To 
which I am fain to believe that he would have 
been at a loss what to reply. 

And yet a certain horror of apprehension 
seizes me. What if I am afflicted with a 
curious sort of color-blindness: an affection 
which permits me to see the relation of tints 
under one set of conditions, and draws a veil 
over my eyes or produces an effect of spherical 
or chromatic aberration in another? Perhaps 
there are no such colors in the sunset and in 
the rainbow as I imagine that I see in them, 
but, on the contrary, these show only neutral 
tints with which the palette is competent to 
deal with ease. Or perhaps it may be another 
sort of deficiency: I remember that when that 
brilliant scientific lecturer, Professor Tyndall, 
appeared before us at the Brooklyn Academy 
and showed the wonders of the spectrum, by 

250 



THE SENSE OF COLOR 

interposing certain prepared sheets he extended 
the same far into the nether darkness, and re- 
vealed a glow of light in spaces to the appear- 
ance of light in which our imperfect eyes were 
not wonted. Is it that in the evolution of the 
race, the barrier of grossness and dullness of 
sense has at length been broken down, and 
that which was and is, to us who are passing, 
but as a sealed book, has become to the newer 
generation an open vision? 

Mayhap this is the secret, and if it be so, 
we can but as faithful stoic-epicureans be 
thankful for the pleasures which we have en- 
joyed, and hail with equanimity and a sym- 
pathetic thrill the greater glories which have 
dawned upon the eyes of our successors. May 
they live to drink in as much rapture of de- 
light in their ever scintillating prismatic 
world as we have found in the calmer and 
quieter world which we have been content to 
call our home. 

But still another idea arises. Perhaps I 
have been but dreaming all these years, and I 
am now just feeling the restlessness of ap- 
proaching consciousness. " I have had a 
dream past the wit of man to say what dream 
it was; man is but an ass if he go about to 
expound this dream," as Bottom says. 

" Where is it now, the glory and the 
dream?" Where is it now? In the very 
pith and marrow of the bones of those of us 

251 



THE SENSE OF COLOR 

who have come under the glamour of her 
before whose light even painters must bow 
the knee. 

" . . . We are such stuff 
As dreams are made on." 

Come then, let me dream again, nor wake me 
from my vision of the heavenly beatitudes of 
this earthly world, until with a reverent hand 
you take the brush — not to improve upon 
nature — that you cannot do, — not to imitate 
nature, — for this also you cannot do, but to 
spell out in color and form the song which na- 
ture has written with a pencil of light, as it 
thrills along nerves tuned to her key, but 
still human nerves with their human and per- 
sonal ingredient to contribute to the harmony. 



252 



XXXVII 
THE LATE JACK FROST 

NOT that Jack is dead — far from it. 
Indeed, to-day he appears very- 
much alive. At noon on Monday 
the thermometer registered 55°, 
and it rained, and it rained ; it was a summer 
downpour. Forty hours later it registered 
15 , the air was as clear as a bell, and the 
ground seemed like flint. The late Frost 
made his appearance on this occasion, and his 
antics were, like the heathen Chinee, peculiar. 
I have had occasion to lay a walk about 
two hundred yards long from the cottage to 
the highway, and I have learned a thing or 
two. Like that of Fernandiwud, in the " New 
Gospel of Peace," this walk is slantindicular, 
and it is slightly, though not greatly, circum- 
ambient. A part of the ground being at times, 
and especially in the Spring, inclined to be 
moist, not to say wet, with the water descend- 
ing from the ledge, instead of depressing the 
path, as is often done, I have elevated it several 
inches, using as material a more or less com- 
pletely disintegrated rock, underlaid (for a 
portion of the distance only) with small stones. 

253 



THE LATE JACK FROST 

I argued that by this means I should induce 
the water to run off, and so leave me, under 
ordinary circumstances, a dry path. Such, in- 
deed, was the result, and so far, well. But 

" The best laid plans o' mice and men 
Gang aft a-gley." 

In dry weather, hot or cold, or temperate, 
my path serves me excellently. In merely 
rainy weather it does as well as I have any 
right to ask, and better than some of the vil- 
lage sidewalks. But again, 

" They reckon ill who leave me out," 

and in this case the "me" is, as I suppose, 
capillary attraction. I didn't know much 
about capillary attraction — who does? I 
have discovered to my discomfort, (occasional 
only, I hope, not frequent), that, while the 
waters from above are not much of a nuisance, 
the waters from beneath — the waters under 
the earth — are very much so. 

I remember that they used to say that water 
seeks its own level ; it appears that it also seeks 
the level of somebody else. Who but a wise 
man — and I am sorry to say that most of us 
dare not aspire to be included in that category 
— who but a wise man would have anticipated 
that when the ground beneath became soaked, 
instead of the water from the path descending 

254 



THE LATE JACK FROST 

to mingle its tide with the main body, the 
waters from below would bob up serenely 
through each several pore and produce upon 
the surface a beautiful brown substance of 
exactly the proper consistence for the making 
of a mud pudding, or to relieve you of your 
loose overshoes? Especially when the afore- 
said John has been around during the night 
playing his pranks and is followed curiously 
by the sun spying out all his devices. Then 
until the scamp has been completely driven off 
the field, your best course will be — I am sorry 
to say it, for it seems inhospitable — to step 
off upon the grass on one side, and treat the 
path as some drawing-room chairs seem to be 
constructed to be treated, or as the backwoods- 
man endeavored to treat the cuspidor — " avoid 
it altogether.''' I fear that this famous path 
will not be satisfactory at all times until I 
provide a different surface. 

But this morning the condition above de- 
scribed did not exist; and just for the reason 
that the late John had put in his fine work 
with such skill, and held to it so tenaciously, 
that even the all-conquering sun was com- 
pelled to make a pause. And his work was 
done in a way that greatly interested me. 

Upon the loose sloping sides, and also upon 
the upper portion of the path, excepting upon 
the middle, which has been made rather firm 
by many footfalls, are ranked pillars of ice, in 

255 



THE LATE JACK FROST 

most cases standing quite close together and 
being two or three inches in height and from 
an eighth to a quarter or a third of an inch in 
thickness, but made up of threadlike crystals. 
Often quite straight and parallel, like basaltic 
columns, they are perhaps as frequently some- 
what curved, and occasionally they are quite 
bent over and wound into volutes or spirals. 
Many of them are grimy with sand and earth ; 
others carry only a cap of earth upon their 
heads, while most seem clear and crystalline. 
Lying sometimes across the tops of several of 
these are small plants of buttercup or sorrel or 
tufts of grass, which have been ejected root 
and branch and cast upon the cold charity of 
a most uncompromising world. This is one 
of the forms of suffering which bear most hard 
upon vegetation during a snowless season. 
Last year our hillsides were not free from 
snow after the fifth of November, this year the 
snow came a month later, and, although it 
persists, it does so apologetically, and conceals 
itself in hollows and shady places as much as 
it may. 

Falling back upon that mysterious power 
or effect which is called capillary attraction, 
on account of which liquids are given to as- 
cending skyward in slender tubes, I suppose 
that the water in the earth mounts steadily in 
the same direction through the fine pores in 
the material; that in warm or moderate, dry 

256 






THE LATE JACK FROST 

or windy weather it is immediately evaporated 
and borne away, but in cold weather it is 
frozen on reaching the surface, and so remains 
to be lifted into the air and held in support by 
the rising tide. This may be quite unscientific, 
but " that's the way it looks." I noticed the 
same condition upon the sides of my trenches 
wherever the ground was wet, the whole 
being covered with serried files of icy guard- 
ians. 

In a small open ditch upon the lowland 
another curious effect struck me, due to the 
frost, but merely an accidental incident. 
There is considerable fall in the ditch, and the 
bottom is slightly irregular and uneven. A 
roof of ice has formed over it just above the 
present surface of the running water, but so 
close that the water from time to time reaches 
this roof. Where the air is interposed, the 
tone is of the usual white or gray resulting 
from this fact, but where the water touches 
the ice the gray effect disappears, giving place 
to the familiar leaden tone of clear ice resting 
upon water. In consequence we have creep- 
ing and writhing down the ditch a succession 
of constantly changing forms like pollywogs, 
or the formless Proteus, Amoeba diffluens. 
The effect is extremely odd. We think of the 
passage as a great throat, and remember 
Thackeray — was it? — in his first experience 
with an American oyster, when he felt as if 

257 



THE LATE JACK FROST 

he had swallowed a baby, or the man who was 
so delighted with his tipple that he wished his 
oesophagus were a mile long. 

The windows have only begun to show 
those forests of arctic vegetation which follow 
in form — away off, and, as it were, in the 
cerements of the grave — the luxuriant growths 
of the torrid zone. Is it not singular, this 
imitation in colorless crystal of the forms of 
tropic vegetation, which in their own home 
suggest all that is of heat and passion — 
ravenous beasts and venomous serpents full of 
malignancy; and heavy, hot, malarious vapors, 
and leaden-eyed repose! Here, every vestige 
of their fire gone, they yet sparkle and glitter 
on our window panes, the pure abstraction of 
that which was so full of life and glow, and 
all about them are the counterfeit present- 
ments of the stars themselves, in like ethereal 
character and alike ephemeral. For let but 
a ray of the sun touch them — at the mere sug- 
gestion of the warmth which is the life of their 
prototypes, they fly away into the unfathom- 
able abyss that engulfs the things that were. 

One perfect loveliness of the valley rarely 
comes to me upon the hill. The fog does 
not often rise to the cottage, and the vapors 
which float from the steaming river upon the 
coming of sudden cold never reach me. Con- 
sequently it is the rare exception when the 
weeds and shrubs and trees upon the hillside 

258 



1 



THE LATE JACK FROST 

adorn themselves with that transcendent jew- 
elry with which they are frequently clothed 
in the valley. I must get down among the 
folk who inhabit the lowlands, and past them 
to the bank of the river itself, to see this dis- 
play at its best. But one to whom the spec- 
tacle is familiar knows full well that the walk, 
a delight in itself, is a small price to pay for 
so wonderful a show, and those who have 
never seen it might put a girdle round the 
earth and embrace nothing more beautiful of 
its kind. 

As the currents of vapor-laden air strike 
the blades of grass, the graceful brown or gray 
spikes of the goldenrod or of the aster or wild 
carrot, the wires of the fence, the tufts of 
hanging horsehair, the twigs and branches of 
the shrubs and trees, from every point spring 
fairy fernlike forms, the veriest thistledown in 
crystal; and when the morning breaks the 
world is sheathed in silver plumes, the like of 
which no mortal hand could fashion. A 
breath of wind, a touch upon the tree trunk, 
and all the air is filled with flashing gems. 
And this is Jack Frost's jewelry for festal 
days. 



259 



XXXVIII 

UN MAUVAIS QUART 
D'HEURE 

MY muscles are quite unused to such 
continued violent exercise, but if 
I find them steady enough I must 
record my very latest exciting 
experience while it is still fresh. But first let 
me take another observation and assure myself 
that all is as it should be. Yes, the field is 
secure, and now to my story. 

Since the coming of the Autumn I have been 
much annoyed by the seed-vessels of the Bidens, 
Sticktight or Beggar ticks or Bur Marigold, 
which has effected a lodgment, and a very 
secure one, in the swamp, and especially upon 
the northwest margin of the lower pool and 
between that and the fence. During the sum- 
mer, being busy with other matters, I paid no 
attention to it, merely noticing a bright yellow 
glow along the margin, and not taking ac- 
count of its cause. But since age has dimmed 
and quenched the color, and brought ripeness 
to the plants, I have had frequent occasion to 
pass that way, and each time have been the 
victim of a most exasperating felonious attack, 

260 



MAUVAIS QUART D'HEURE 

The little triangles of the Desmodium are bad 
enough, but when the Sticktight or the Spanish 
needle takes hold of you, you are lost. You 
step incautiously into a group of the innocent- 
looking dry plants and out again, and upon 
your trousers and your coat, and whatsoever 
other woolen garments it has been your evil 
fortune to wear upon your exterior on that 
auspicious occasion appear in serried ranks the 
preposterous seed-vessels, vowing that you 
shall do their behest, and spread them abroad 
that they may find " fresh woods and pastures 
new." And then, when you have sought a 
place of safety, and patiently (of course) and 
with as little use of " language " as comports 
with the occasion, picked off each individual 
little wretch, and thrown it upon the ground 
to germinate next season, in all probability, 
upon making your next motion you again put 
your foot into it. 

Such has been my fate many times during 
the installation of the water works, and at 
length I vowed that I would be saved by fire 
if in no other way. But, try as I might, the 
— things (with an adjective) would not burn. 
Over and over again I started the fire among 
the dead leaves and the grass stems and blades, 
and after a little deceptive burst, and a little 
flickering, it would ignominiously expire. 

To-day, hoping that a short dry spell had 
made the material more combustible, I deter- 

261 



MAUVAIS QUART D'HEURE 

mined to try it again. The wind was rather 
fresh, and to avoid risk I started my blaze 
upon the leeward side of the group of worst 
offenders, next the small sheet of ice. Again 
and again — I suppose nearly a dozen times — 
I set a burning match to the material. Once 
the fire spread over a space of eight or ten feet 
and then expired; in other cases the area 
burned over was very trifling. 

Annoyed by my ill success, I crossed over 
toward the fence, and again touched a match 
to a dry clump, hoping that the draft would 
carry the flame into the mass, and create such 
a body of heat as would bear it across to the 
border of the pool. Still another failure. 

I tried it once more in the same quarter: it 
was once too often. It will not do to torment 
the djinn overmuch. In a moment I had a 
nice blaze. A moment after I had a fine 
blaze. And I had hardly realized this fact 
when I comprehended that I had an ardent 
blaze, that it was not traveling just in the 
direction which I desired, and that the wind 
was high. 

On the north side of the pool there was a 
narrow brake of wild roses, with a margin of 
grass and weeds between it and the water, or 
rather ice, and on the other side of it a fringe 
of the same kind between it and a small plot 
covered with dry corn stalks. It was toward 
this brake that the flame sprang, and upon it 

262 



MAUVAIS QUART D'HEURE 

that it divided, going past the pool, upon the 
north side. The flame was flung into the air, 
hot and high. I was startled, and sprang for 
a stick with which I had intended to direct it, 
and by beating tried to stay it upon the side 
next the corn, but in vain; the flame jumped 
past me, a yard at a time. Fortunately the 
dry corn did not come close to the edge of the 
swamp ; on this side the fire was making up the 
swale diagonally toward my neighbor's fence. 
I had seen this sort of thing before, and my 
heart began to beat rather vigorously as I took 
a glance at the situation. 

The field for immediate operations was not 
large, and the time of special anxiety — for me 
— was not likely to continue long. Sheets of 
hot flame shot into the air, and the wind 
seemed to increase. On the side upon which I 
stood the amount of dry annual growth was 
not considerable. Next came the rose brake, 
gradually giving way, further up the swale, 
to a line of spice bushes and other shrubs, and 
beyond was the small swamp proper, full of 
tall dried weeds and grass, into which the fire 
was rapidly eating its way. Beyond that rose 
the grass-covered slope with the ghosts of 
goldenrod and asters and iron weed, stretch- 
ing up to the wood which masks the ledge, 
and diagonally nearly to the cottage, which 
was not so far away as the wood, a bare hun- 
dred yards or less from the foot of the slope. 

263 



MAUVAIS QUART D'HEURE 

I do not know how it may be with others, 
but I am free to confess that when I come into 
conflict with the elements thus, I do not feel 
myself a star of the first magnitude. I can 
hardly imagine a crevice so small that I could 
not slip into it. Whether the hole were round 
or square, I fear that this peg would rattle. 

Among the high weeds of the marsh it was 
clear that I could do nothing: the fight, for 
what it might be worth, must be made near 
the foot of the slope, where the grass was thin 
and short. Making a detour and crossing to 
the other side, where I cut a bushy savin to 
serve for a besom — I hoped of salvation, not of 
destruction — I waited for a moment and 
watched. But the vision of the spreading 
flame and the thought of the cottage, of the 
wood, of the country beyond the ledge, was 
too much, and I sprang forward to contest the 
field at a point where there seemed a possi- 
bility, at least, of using the " flying wedge " to 
effect, and breaking the line of the advancing 
foe in the middle. But it was a useless effort. 
The smoke filled my eyes, and my threshing 
among the high weeds seemed but to add fury 
to the flames. 

I retreated to the foot of the hillside. I 
had hitherto been alone: now, as I glanced up, 
I saw a gaunt laborer from the neighboring 
farm looking down doubtfully upon the scene 
from the farther bank. I shouted to him that 

264 



MAUVAIS QUART D'HEURE 

the fire had escaped from my control, and 
asked him to look out for the line that was 
threatening the fence and the adjoining prop- 
erty up the swale, while I watched the ad- 
vance upon the hillside. 

I did not have long to wait. In another 
moment the vanguard of the fiery host had 
reached the edge of the slope and begun to 
run among the short grass. Here was my 
chance, if I had one. I laid about me with 
my savin with a right good will, but at first 
apparently with no effect. The wind 
freshened, the smoke was driven in my face, 
the flames were spreading to the right and to 
the left. I looked at the cottage, and at 
the wood along the ledge, my beautiful 
" Hanger." The fire was hot, but it were as 
though cold chills ran along my spine as I 
realized how short the distance was 'twixt me 
and them, and how fast the flames were spread- 
ing. " I need you over here," I shouted ; 
" we've got to fight for the house and wood." 
The rustic was not naturally over-quick in 
his motions, but soon I found him on the line 
of approach to the cottage, also savin in hand, 
and laying about him with more skill than I, 
for he had had more experience in this kind 
of work. 

As the edge of the fire spread up the hill- 
side, though its progress was rapid it found 
comparatively little material, and the body of 

265 



MAUVAIS QUART D'HEURE 

flame and smoke was greatly reduced. This 
was much in our favor, and before long gaps 
appeared in the advancing line. It was none 
too soon. A little higher up the combustible 
material was much more considerable. 
Cheered by this success we redoubled our 
efforts, and it soon became evident that we 
were mastering the situation in this quarter. 
Occasionally a tongue of flame would spring 
up upon ground over which we had passed, 
but a swish of the red cedar brought it 
quickly to naught. Though the time seemed 
long, I suppose really it was but a few mo- 
ments after the attack began at this point be- 
fore we could feel assured that we had been 
wholly successful. 

We now turned our attention to the north 
branch. The fire had there been advancing 
slowly among the bushes, not having sufficient 
volume to attack these successfully, and only 
feeding upon the clusters of weeds among 
them. Now and then it would find a rich 
mouthful, and it was making a brilliant show 
in swallowing one of these, and a mighty 
crackling, when I attacked it; but I retired 
from the conflict, alas! not victor but van- 
quished. 

However, this morsel digested, the devour- 
ing element found less food to batten upon, 
and as it spread here and there I fought it in 
detail, and to my immense relief it was not 

266 



MAU VMS QUART D'HEURE 

long before the last curling tongue of flame 
was extinguished. 

The whole affair continued, I suppose, but 
little more than half an hour, and probably 
not more than an acre of ground was covered, 
but my blood was coursing freely while it 
lasted, and I was richer in experience when 
it was over. 

And it was only since I have been writing 
that I perceived an unusual fragrance of 
singed hair, and detected an unfamiliar crinkle 
in the end of my mustache. 

I may remark that most of the weeds 
which I sought to destroy are still standing. 



267 



XXXIX 

MADEMOISELLE PREFERE 

ET 
MADEMOISELLE JEANNE 

(With humble apologies to Anatole France.) 

The following brief correspondence will 
explain itself: 

Nov. 20, 1895. 
A Mademoiselle 

Mademoiselle Prefere 
Will ze ladies do ze scribe ze grate plezaire 
for to eat une volaille chez lui, on ze di- 
manche ? 

M , he say he find yet one ver' long leg 

hen-roostair in ze pen. 

Votre tres humble serviteur 

S. B. 

Most Honored Monsieur 
Member of the Institute 
It was necessary for me to consult the 
tableau d'honneur before I could accept your 
esteemed invitation, for my young pupil or 
myself. Everything in my establishment is 
carried on with the most sensitive regard to 

268 



VIRGINIE ET JEANNE 

justice and fidelity. What was my joy, how- 
ever, to find her name enrolled high upon the 
list! 

We shall both attend your little dinner on 
the coming Sunday with satisfaction, with 
pleasure I may say, — indeed with more pleas- 
ure than it would be becoming for me to ex- 
press. 

Yours, my dear sir 

Altogether devotedly 

Virginie Prefere. 
November twenty-second. 

And so they came, Mademoiselle Prefere 
probably in blue as was her wont, with her 
pelerine very much in evidence, and Jeanne 
" wrapped up in her cloak, with her hat tilted 
back on her head, and her feather fluttering in 
the wind, like a schooner in full rig! " And 
the dinner passed off beautifully, old Therese 
doing her part with her usual fidelity, whether 
she liked it or not. The chicken was done to 
a turn, and was as tender as a thought, not- 
withstanding the faint praise with which it 
had been heralded, and the vegetables — well 
they were grown at Underledge, which should 
be a sufficient guarantee of their excellence. 
The Brown Betty was as good as ever ap- 
peared on the Quais Malaquais, and the wine 
of the country which accompanied it did no 
despite to the grapes from which it was 

269 



VIRGINIE ET JEANNE 

pressed. If Jeanne was disappointed at the 
absence of jelly, let us draw the veil of a 
modest reserve over that maidenly weakness. 

And then, when we had at length adjourned 
to the City of Books, Mademoiselle Virginie 
ensconced herself in her usual corner with a 
tender sigh of comfort which expressed addi- 
tional volumes, and I must say that she con- 
ducted herself thereafter with such discretion 
and self-control, as to cause me much to 
marvel, and to feel assured that some great 
revolution must have occurred in the Rue 
Demours. Even Jeanne was affected, inso- 
much that, laughable as it seems now that the 
day is over, and the library is tenanted only 
by Hannibal and myself, she cuddled herself 
down upon the floor in front of the open fire 
and laid her silly little head upon the 
madame's knee, while Hannibal himself, alias 
Kittiwink, was beguilded into some faint dem- 
onstration of confidence, a circumstance to 
which I should now hesitate to allude near the 
feline ear. 

And I — there is no fool like an old fool, — 
I, yielding at length to the urgent solicitations 
of Mademoiselle, after an appropriate show of 
reluctance carried not too far, consented to 
read passages from my monograph recently 
crowned by the Institute, on the " Poems 
inedite attributed to the late Captain Kidd, 
with critical suggestions exoteric and esoteric" 

270 



VIRGINIE ET JEANNE 

When she found that she had persuaded me, 
she beamed all over like a snowdrift under 
the moonlight; and so, letting her fancy-work 
fall into her lap and settling back in her easy- 
chair with her hands clasped fondly over her 
pelerine, and her eyes ecstatically fixed upon 
the gray plaster above her, she drank in the 
words of wisdom which flowed from my lips. 

" You will observe," I read, " with what a 
delicate intuition this bold mariner, 

"... the mildest manner'd man 
That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat ' 

enters into the inmost feeling of each of his 
captives as they walk the plank. To begin 
with, the scene is pictured most graphically, 
and with the pencil of a finished artist. The 
two vessels lie side by side, gently swaying, 
and gravely courtesying to each other in the 
undulating roll of the summer sea; the great 
sun nears the western horizon, surrounding 
itself with a gauze of golden haze as it slowly 
sinks to rest, tarrying as it were, that it may 
bestow a parting benediction upon the impos- 
ing ceremony: over the side of the captured 
craft extends the narrow bridge, securely 
fastened, that it may not embarrass the steps 
of the advancing company, but softly falling 
and rising with the rolling of the ship as 
though pointing for each, first to the path, then 
to the goal. All these things are indicated 

271 



VIRGINIE ET JEANNE 

to the mind and almost to the eye of the reader 
by a line here and a line there, placed so un- 
erringly that the consummate art appears in 
the very fact of its utter disappearance. 

" And then one by one, each in his turn, the 
neophytes advance, and as they do so the poet 
accompanies each, and becomes the sympathetic 
mouthpiece of his inmost thought. I cannot 
conceive of a closer appreciation of a varied 
individual feeling than is here shown, and it 
irks me to think that at times there may have 
been those that did not wholly realize the 
noble manner in which they and their musings 
would be immortalized." 

I went on to give some special instances of 
the nature described, reading poems in il- 
lustration of my theme. Then incidentally I 
added: 

" It gives me pleasure to restore to the 
canon and to its proper place a gem which 
found its way into print many years ago and 
since that time has floated around without an 
owner. My readers are certainly all familiar 
with it; it is one of the poems which now 
belong to the world at large: 

" ' Fee, faw, foh, fum, 

I smell the blood of an Englishman; 
Dead or alive I will have some. ' 

In a happy moment of inspiration its author- 
ship came to me, and now that it is restored to 

272 



VIRGINIE ET JEANNE 

its proper place, and carefully examined and 
compared with those which accompany it, the 
internal evidence will, I am sure, be sufficient 
to convince every intelligent critic of the jus- 
tice of my attribution of it to our gifted 
author. And as Frenchmen we should take 
pride in noting a certain Gallic color in the 
underlying idea, and in the expansive force 
of its expression. In fact, this leads me to 
suggest the theory of a possible intermixture 
of the blood of la patrie, la belle France, in the 
veins of the insouciant poet at some remote 
epoch. Indeed his name suggests this. It 
seems evident that the second * d ' in the 
name as we now have it, is an instance of the 
common practice of doubling the final con- 
sonant. The remaining ' d ' was probably 
a palatal softening of the original ' t.' We 
thus reach 'Kit,' which was probably the 
form which the name first took in England, 
being a haphazard translation of the French 
form, Chaton. Unquestionably the proper 
name of our poet's family was Chaton, and it 
came from the town of Tarascon. 

" Monsieur Chaton, with a modesty famil- 
iar in all great writers, permitted few of his 
poems to see the light, and it is only by the 
merest chance, following upon the most care- 
ful research, that I have been able to rescue 
from oblivion the priceless treasure which I 
now place before you. One poem, however, 

273 



VIRGINIE ET JEANNE 

in spite of all his care became generally known 
many years ago. The principle is sound that 

* Love will find a way,' and ' Murder will 
out,' and the best things refuse to be forever 

* cabined, cribbed, confined.' In it there ap- 
pears conclusive evidence of his commanding 
philosophic perception, and poetic insight. 
Who can fail to see in the simple phrase 

' ' ' My name was Captain Kidd 
When I sailed ! ' 

the luminous thought of the poetic idealist? 

" It has always seemed to me that English 
William, in the assumed catholicity of his 
much-quoted 

" ' That which we call a rose 
By any other name would smell as sweet,' 

was in fact controlled by a curious insular 
prejudice. But, while saying this, candor 
compels me to add that I am satisfied that 
William was not wholly devoid of poetic feel- 
ing. If he could not aspire to genius, I think 
that we must nevertheless concede to him a 
certain degree of talent. It is true that he 
was a most daring plagiarist — that he habit- 
ually took things wherever he found them, 
but in this he anticipated to some extent even 
my own hero, and so gave the strongest evi- 
dence of elevation above the common herd. 
And it cannot be denied that the manner in 

274 



VIRGINIE ET JEANNE 

which he concealed these appropriations, by 
glosses and otherwise, was skillful to a degree. 
In the passage under consideration he betrays 
his native narrowness. In that which I have 
cited from the later poet, on the contrary, we 
find a breadth of view which is in keeping with 
the magnificence of the vasty deep, and the 
grand sweep of the mighty winds with which 
the poet was familiar. With a vision w T hich 
we cannot estimate at too high a value, he 
perceived that not only were certain names 
appropriate to certain individuals, but that 
they must be in harmony with certain times, 
places, and occurrences, and so he nobly says: 

" * My name was Captain Kidd 

When I sailed ! » " 

My enthusiasm rose as I progressed in my 
reading, and I ended with a triumphant peal 
under which the sensitive Virginie quivered. 
This irrepressible movement and tribute to my 
irresistible eloquence dislodged a spool of silk, 
which fell to the floor, followed by Kittiwink, 
who pounced upon it and turned a double 
somerset on the rug. This in turn awakened 
Jeanne, who doubtless had imagined that un- 
conscious cerebration was the only appropriate 
and effective method of considering lucubra- 
tions which had been crowned by the Acad- 
emy, and she immediately began to dig at her 
eyes with both fists, awakening the decided 

275 



VIRGINIE ET JEANNE 

disapproval of the correct Mademoiselle Pre- 
fere. 

" My child," said she, " how shocking! 
You should not do so: what will the eminent 
Monsieur Sylvestre think of such a gesture? " 

I protested that I was incapable of thought, 
and I imagined that at the same moment I 
perceived just a faint twitching of that eye 
of Jeanne which was farther removed from 
her preceptress. But just then the clock 
struck, and sounded the hour for a return to 
the Rue Demours. 



276 



XL 

THE PASSING OF THE 
PUMP 

IN an exceedingly interesting monograph 
upon " The Physical Geography of 
Southern New England," Professor 
William Morris Davis of Harvard 
sketches the probable order of the later events 
through which this valley and these hills have 
obtained their present form. He shows how 
the contour of the surface and other indica- 
tions point to the existence all over this region 
at no distant time in the past, say within a 
few hundred thousand years, of a great table- 
land, surmounted here and there by scattered 
peaks, which table-land had been formed in 
earlier times by denudation — the wearing 
down of considerable eminences, and the filling 
up of deep valleys. He tells us that this plain, 
thus gradually worn down nearly to the level 
of the sea, must have been subsequently ele- 
vated to the height of or higher than the 
present hills, with a dip to the southward and 
eastward toward the Atlantic, whereupon 
began a new series of excavations, which laid 
open the present lowlands, and dug out the 

277 



PASSING OF THE PUMP 

beds of the watercourses, leaving the long and, 
upon the average, nearly horizontal lines of 
the hills as representatives, though themselves 
already much degraded, of the former sloping 
upland. It was long anterior to this that the 
enormous streams of lava were poured out 
over the beds of red sandstone, low beetling 
crags from which form the ledge which now 
dominates the cottage at Underledge, from 
fragments of which, as if in bravado, the cot- 
tage itself has been constructed ; and it was at 
a later date that these masses became as they 
are now, tip-tilted, not as the petal of a 
flower, but as something of a much sterner 
sort. 

Must I think of myself as a sort of Sala- 
mander, thus living within a burnt-out lava 
cell, or am I to be reminded rather of Sam- 
son's experience with the carcass of the lion ? — 
" Out of the eater came forth meat, and out 
of the strong came forth sweetness." Under 
the uncertainty let us put the best face upon 
the matter, and hardily claim the benefit of 
the doubt. 

Where was the prodigious volcano from 
which flowed these great streams of molten 
lava? I fear that we may never discover the 
crater. Pleasant it is indeed to live serenely 
upon the edge of the upland, with no violent 
perturbations of the solid earth to molest or 
make afraid, yet methinks that I should now 

278 



PASSING OF THE PUMP 

have some added enjoyment if, posted upon 
a secure height, I could once in the far-off 
time have looked down upon the awful boil- 
ing of that mighty caldron, and in the dark- 
ness of the night could have watched its fiery 
streams spreading over this now peaceful land. 
It is something to be able to picture it in 
thought, and I fear that I shall have to content 
myself with that. To be sure, recorded his- 
tory is not without its suggestions as to strange 
internal disturbances at no great distance from 
this spot. They may not have had anything to 
do with that extinct volcano, but we must re- 
member Mark Twain's very pertinent and tri- 
umphant query upon a certain occasion, " If 
this is not the tomb of Adam, whose tomb is 
it?" 

Now the town of East Haddam is some 
twenty-five miles southeast of this point. 
Dr. Trumbull, in his " History of Connecti- 
cut," says: "The Indian name of the town 
was Machemoodus, which in English, is the 
place of noises; a name given with the utmost 
propriety to the place. The accounts given 
of the noises and quakings there, are very re- 
markable. Were it not that the people are 
accustomed to them, they would occasion great 
alarm. The Rev. Mr. Hosmer, in a letter to 
Mr. Prince of Boston, written August 13th, 
1729, gives this account of them: ' As to the 
earthquakes, I have something considerable 

279 



PASSING OF THE PUMP 

and awful to tell you. Earthquakes have 
been here, (and no where but in this precinct, 
as can be discerned ; that is, they seem to have 
their centre rise and origin among us,) as has 
been observed for more than thirty years. I 
have been informed that in this place, before 
the English Settlements, there were great 
numbers of Indian inhabitants, and that it was 
a place of extraordinary Indian Pawaws, or, 
in short, where the Indians drove a prodigious 
trade at worshipping the devil. Also I was 
informed, that many years past, an old Indian 
was asked, What was the reason of the noises 
in this place? To which he replied, that the 
Indian God was very angry because English- 
men's God was come here. 

"'Now whether there be anything diabolical 
in these things I know not; but this I know, 
that God Almighty is to be seen and trembled 
at, in what has been often heard among us. 
Whether it be fire or air distressed in the 
subterraneous caverns of the earth, cannot be 
known; for there is no eruption, no explosion 
perceptible, but by sounds and tremors, which 
sometimes are very fearful and dreadful. I 
have myself heard eight or ten sounds succes- 
sively, and imitating small arms, in the space 
of five minutes. I have, I suppose, heard 
several hundreds of them within twenty years ; 
some more, some less terrible. Sometimes we 
have heard them almost every day, and great 

280 



PASSING OF THE PUMP 

numbers of them in the space of a year. 
Oftentimes I have observed them to be coming 
down from the north, imitating slow thunder, 
until the sound came near or right under, and 
then there seemed to be a breaking like the 
noise of a cannon shot, or severe thunder, 
which shakes the houses, and all that is in 
them. They have in a manner ceased, since 
the great earthquake. As I remember there 
have been but two heard since that time, and 
those but moderate.' 

" A worthy gentleman about six years since 
gave the following account of them. ' The 
awful noises of which Mr. Hosmer gave an 
account, in his historical minutes; and con- 
cerning which you desire further information, 
continue to the present time. The effects 
they produce, are various as the intermediate 
degrees, between the roar of a cannon, and the 
noise of a pistol. The concussions of the 
earth, made at the same time, are as much 
diversified as the sounds in the air. The 
shock they give to a dwelling house, is the 
same as the falling of logs on the floor. The 
smaller shocks produced no emotions of terror 
or fear in the minds of the inhabitants. They 
are spoken of as usual occurrences, and are 
called Moodus noises. But when they are so 
violent as to be felt in the adjacent towns, they 
are called earthquakes. During my residence 
here, which has been almost thirty-six years, I 

281 



PASSING OF THE PUMP 

have invariably observed, after some of the 
most violent of these shocks, that an account 
has been published in the newspapers, of a 
small shock of an earthquake, at New London 
and Hartford. Nor do I believe, in all that 
period, there has been any account published 
of an earthquake in Connecticut, which was 
not far more violent here than in any other 
place. By recurring to the newspapers, you 
will find, that an earthquake was noticed on 
the 1 8th of May, 1791, about ten o'clock p. M. 
It was perceived as far distant as Boston and 
New York. A few minutes after there was 
another shock, which was perceptible at the 
distance of seventy miles. Here, at that time, 
the concussion of the earth, and the roaring 
of the atmosphere, were most tremendous. 
Consternation and dread filled every house. 
Many chimnies were untopped and walls 
thrown down. It was a night much to be 
remembered; for besides the two shocks that 
were noticed from a distance, during the night 
there was here a succession of shocks, to the 
number of twenty, perhaps thirty; the effects 
of which, like all others, decreased, in every 
direction, in proportion to the distances. The 
next day, stones of several tons weight, were 
found removed from their places; and aper- 
tures, in the earth, and fissures in unmoveable 
rocks, ascertained the places where the explo- 
sions were made. Since that time, the noises 

282 



PASSING OF THE PUMP 

and shocks have been less frequent than be- 
fore; though not a year passeth over us, but 
some of them are perceptible.' " 

The town of Derby is about thirty miles 
southwest of us. The following letter ap- 
peared in the Connecticut Gazette (I quote 
from John Warner Barber's " Connecticut 
Historical Collections ") : 

"Derby, Feb. 18th, 1764. 
" On the evening of the seventh of this 
instant, Feb. 1764, there was a violent 
storm of hail and rain ; the next morning after 
was observed a large breach in a hill on the 
west side of the old river, supposed to be oc- 
casioned by some subterranean wind or fire; 
the breach is about twenty feet deep, though 
much caved in, in length one hundred and 
thirteen feet; about sixty rods of land are 
covered with the gravel and sand cast out of 
the cavity, some of which was carried two 
hundred and fifty nine feet to the brink of 
the river; four trees of about a foot in diam- 
eter, were carried one hundred and seventy 
three feet distance, and 'tis supposed by their 
situation that they must have been forced up 
forty feet high; some small stones about the 
bigness of walnuts, were carried with such 
velocity that they stuck fast in a green tree 
that stood near the cavity; a large dry log 
better than two feet diameter was carried up 

283 



PASSING OF THE PUMP 

so far in the air, that by the force of the fall 
one end of it stuck so fast in the ground that 
it kept the other end up. The narrowest part 
of the breach is about thirty feet at the surface 
of the ground, and the bottom of the breach is 
crooking, winding much like the streaks of 
lightning. 

" The above account was taken by exact 
rule by us, 

Silas Baldwin, 
Nehemiah Fisher, 
David Wooster." 

To this a note is appended from " Webster 
on Pestilence," " A light was seen on the spot 
in the evening before the explosion. It was 
accompanied with a loud report, and some 
fossil substances were ejected, which were 
analyzed by Dr. Munson of New Haven, and 
found to contain arsenic and sulphur." 

By the way, this book of " Collections " is 
an invaluable storehouse of interesting items. 
Moodus was not the only place where reports 
as of small arms were heard, and in other 
instances these reports seem to have been more 
useful. Take the following from Simsbury, 
(Simsbury is about ten miles north of us) : 
" In the commencement of Philip's war in 
New England, in 1675, this town [Simsbury] 
was burnt by the Indians. Connected with 
which event, current tradition has preserved 

284 



PASSING OF THE PUMP 

and handed down the following singular and 
extraordinary fact: that, very shortly before 
the attack by the Indians, early one Sunday 
morning, as Lieut. Robe's father was walk- 
ing over the plain not far from his house, he 
very plainly and distinctly heard the report 
of a small arm, which much surprised him, it 
being the Sabbath. He found, on returning 
to his house, that his family also heard it. 
On going to meeting, at which the inhab- 
itants from all parts of the town were as- 
sembled, it was ascertained that the report 
was heard at the same hour in every quarter. 
It was, on further examination, found to have 
been heard as far south as Saybrook, (fifty 
miles,) and as far north as NortMeld, at that 
time the extent of the English settlements to 
the north. The report of this gun alarmed 
all Connecticut. The Governor summoned 
a council of war to meet at Hartford ; and the 
council issued an order for the inhabitants of 
Simsbury, one and all, to withdraw them- 
selves to Hartford, the then capital." 

And this from Killingly, on the eastern 
border of the State. In this case, the boys of 
to-day would be disposed to call the warning 
" too previous " : 

" The Autumn before the American Revo- 
lution, the people of this town, who had long 
been expecting hostilities to commence, were 
one day alarmed by what they took to be the 

285 



PASSING OF THE PUMP 

continued discharge of cannon and small arms 
to the N. E. in the direction of Boston. The 
noise continued all day and night with scarcely 
any intermission. The sounds heard, it is 
said, exactly resembled those of musketry and 
field pieces. First would be heard a loud 
report and then smaller ones, ' Slam bang, 
slam bang,' to use the language of those who 
relate the circumstance. The impression 
that the British were coming was so strong 
that most of the inhabitants mustered in a 
body to await orders for marching to Boston. 
In a few days however, contrary to expecta- 
tion, they learned that no battle had taken 
place, and that no discharge of cannon or 
small arms had been made between this town 
and Boston. Whether the sounds proceeded 
from the explosion of meteors or not, we are 
unable to say; but the persons who heard 
them considered them as forerunners of the 
war, which actually began six months from 
that time." 

A demonstration of a different character, 
and at a somewhat later day, is reported from 
Salisbury, near the northwest corner of the 
State; the circumstances were related by Mr. 
Sage and his family: 

" These occurrences commenced Nov. 8th, 
1802, at a clothier's shop; a man and two 
boys were in the shop ; the boys had retired to 
rest, it being between 10 and 11 o'clock at 

286 



PASSING OF THE PUMP 

night. A block of wood was thrown through 
the window ; after that, pieces of hard mortar, 
till the man and boys became alarmed and 
went to the house to call Mr. Sage, who 
arose from bed and went to the shop, and 
could hear the glass break often but could not 
discover from whence it came, notwithstand- 
ing the night was very light. He exerted 
himself to discover the cause, but without suc- 
cess. It continued constantly till daylight, 
and then ceased until the next evening at 
eight o'clock, when it commenced again, and 
continued till midnight; then ceased till the 
next evening at dusk, and continued till some 
time in the evening, and then ceased. The 
next day it commenced about an hour before 
sundown and continued about an hour, and 
then it left the shop and began at the dwell- 
ing house of Mr. Ebenezer Landon, ioo rods 
north, in the town of Sheffield. It continued 
several hours, and ceased till next morning: 
when the family were at breakfast it began 
again, and continued two or three hours, and 
ceased till evening, when it began again and 
continued several hours, and ceased till the 
next morning, when it began again and con- 
tinued all the forenoon, and then ceased all 
together. The articles thrown into the shop 
were pieces of wood, charcoal, stone, but 
principally pieces of hard mortar, such as 
could not be found in the neighborhood. 

287 



PASSING OF THE PUMP 

Nothing but stones were thrown into the 
house of Mr. Landon, the first of which were 
thrown into the door. There were 38 panes 
of glass broken out of the shop, and 18 out 
of the dwelling house: in two or three in- 
stances persons were hit by the things that 
were thrown. What was remarkable, nothing 
could be seen coming till the glass broke, and 
whatever passed through, fell directly down 
on the window sill, as if it had been put 
through with a person's fingers, and many 
pieces of mortar and coal were thrown 
through the same hole in the glass in suc- 
cession. Many hundreds of people assembled 
to witness the scene, among whom were 
clergymen and other gentlemen, but none 
were able to detect the source of the mis- 
chief." 

There seems to me to have been some lack 
of dignity in this performance, and, moreover, 
it does not relate itself to important events. 
I like better the occasional aerial displays, 
even though they carry us still further away 
from the volcano of which we are in search. 
As for example, in Killingly again, Mr. Nell 
Alexander is represented as saying: " In the 
American Revolution, just before the sur- 
render of Lord Cornwallis, I was returning 
from a visit to Providence, R. I. I had ar- 
rived in Killingly, and was within four miles 
of my residence at Alexander's Lake. It was 

288 



PASSING OF THE PUMP 

a bright and clear night, without any moon. 
I think it was half past ten when I acci- 
dentally looked up and saw a most brilliant 
sight. A very little south of the zenith, ex- 
tending east and west in the sky, lay an arch 
composed of mounted cannon, with their 
muzzles pointed toward the south. Their 
color was that of the Aurora Borealis. I 
viewed them a long while and attempted to 
number them, but being in a wood, I was un- 
able to discern those which lay near the 
horizon. I then hurried on to overtake a 
friend whose attention I wished to direct to 
the phenomenon. My horse being fatigued 
however, I did not reach him till the remark- 
able sight had disappeared. I related the 
event to every person I saw for a long period 
afterwards, but could find no one who had 
seen it besides myself, until I happened one 
day to be on a visit to my uncle, Mr. Levens, 
who is no longer living. In the course of 
conversation, without knowing that I had 
seen it, he related precisely the same circum- 
stances which I have just related myself. He 
was in Killingly at the time, and but a few 
miles from the place where I was. He in- 
formed me that he took the trouble of count- 
ing the cannon, and as he was in a convenient 
situation for the purpose, he doubted not that 
he had numbered them all. The whole num- 
ber was 64. They were removed at a small 

289 



PASSING OF THE PUMP 

distance from each other, well mounted and 
in a regular line." 

This was evidently a case that ran in the 
family. But my favorite is the following, 
from a letter from the Rev. James Pierpont, 
quoted in Mather's " Magnalia." In 1647 
times were hard in the New Haven colony, 
and a large number became completely dis- 
couraged, and determined to go home. Hav- 
ing fitted out a small vessel, they succeeded 
in extricating her from the ice, and sailed for 
England. 

" In June next ensuing, a great thunder 
storm arose out of the north west ; after which 
(the hemisphere being serene) about an hour 
before sunset, a ship of like dimensions with 
the aforesaid, with her canvass and colours 
abroad, (though the wind northernly,) ap- 
peared in the air coming up from our har- 
bour's mouth, which lyes southward from the 
town, seemingly with her sails filled with a 
fresh gale, holding her course north, and con- 
tinuing under observation, sailing against the 
wind for the space of half an hour. 

" Many were drawn to behold this great 
work of God; yea, the very children cryed 
out — There's a brave ship! At length, 
crowding up as far as there is usually water 
sufficient for such a vessel, and so near some 
of the spectators, as that they imagined a man 
might hurl a stone on board her, her main- 

290 



PASSING OF THE PUMP 

top seemed to be blown off, but left hanging 
in the shrouds; then her missen-top ; then all 
her masting seemed blown away by the board : 
quickly after the hulk brought into a careen, 
she overset, and so vanished into a smoaky 
cloud, which in some time dissipated, leaving, 
as everj'where else, a clear sky. The admir- 
ing spectators could distinguish the several 
colours of each part, the principal rigging, 
and such proportions as caused not only the 
generality of persons to say, This was the 
mould of their ship, and this was her tragick 
end: but Mr. Davenport also in publick de- 
clared to this effect: That God had conde- 
scended for the quieting of their afflicted 
spirits, this extraordinary account of his sov- 
ereign disposal of those for whom so many 
fervent prayers were made continually." 
Was not this the Flying Dutchman, how- 



ever 



But we have traveled far away: let us re- 
turn to Underledge; for even here there has 
been a hint of nature's hidden forces, and 
that within recent times, for I remember that 
but a few months ago, at the beginning of 
September, 1895, I awoke from deep sleep 
in the dead of the night at the tiniest touch 
of that unmistakable tremor which marks the 
shuddering of the earth. 

Perhaps, if I had known something more of 
the history of the hillside, I might still have 

291 



PASSING OF THE PUMP 

bored the well, and perhaps also I might not. 
I believe that the elder or the younger Weller 
says somewhere that " the merit of this ob- 
servation lies in the application of it," or 
words to that effect, but this is not always 
strictly so. The observation might be first- 
rate, but the application of it very bad indeed. 

However this may be, I was about as igno- 
rant as my neighbors, and so it came to pass, 
as I have related elsewhere, that the engine 
was set up, and the drill was let down, and 
began tap, tap, tap-ing, in the modern and 
prosaic form of the inquiry whether Undine 
is at home. And so it continued hammering 
through the " hard-pan " of compact, sandy 
clay, incomplete or over-ripe rock, for a week 
or two, until we had reached a depth of sev- 
enty-eight feet. Then a little coarser sand 
was reported, and a rising of water in the 
tube to the height of thirty or forty feet. 
And I called quits! and the pump was duly 
inserted. 

It was a good pump, a very good pump, 
and it did the best it could. To be sure, it 
was not the easiest thing in the world work- 
ing a pump rod sixty-five feet long, but then 
it might have been worse. And the water 
had a sort of sanguinary aspect, but that 
grew better, much better. And after a while 
it reached a point where, after it had stood 
long enough to settle, we ventured to drink it, 

292 



PASSING OF THE PUMP 

and I can honestly say that I have tasted 
worse. 

Then came one memorable Sunday! I 
pumped for a while in the morning, and I 
said, " Ah — this is something like! The 
water is clearing up nicely ! " And I pumped 
a little while in the afternoon; and after two 
or three strokes, and before any water had 
reached the spout, I noticed a sort of slug- 
gishness, an unwonted reluctance upon the 
part of the machinery which rapidly in- 
creased, and, after a few more strokes, only 
by throwing my whole mighty weight upon 
the pump-handle could I gradually bring it 
down, whereupon it incontinently began to 
rise of itself. That was in the month of 
April, and never again did the unlucky pump 
bring a drop of water to the surface. Its 
bucket was held in the grasp of a quicksand, 
which was worse than Gilliatt's devil-fish, for 
the body of the monster lay safely stowed 
away far beneath the ponderous hill. 

And then we had our experiences, some of 
which I have already detailed. For a time, 
snow freshly gathered and melted provided a 
luxurious tipple, and then, as the season ad- 
vanced, I discovered and developed fine 
springs in the talus of the cliff, which fur- 
nished us a bountiful supply of the purest 
crystal water. Meanwhile the accumulation 
of rain water in the cistern satisfied the im- 

293 



PASSING OF THE PUMP 

perative demands of the general circulatory 
system of the cottage. These were halcyon 
times. But ere the Spring had fairly surren- 
dered to Summer, my last magnificent foun- 
tain under the cliff, which had at first been 
good for a hundred barrels a day, dwindled 
more and more, until at the end its basin was 
as dry as a withered heart. So I was forced 
for culinary purposes, and for the table, to rely 
upon my neighbor's distant well, while ever 
and anon long periods of comparative drought 
caused heaven's fresh supply to run so ex- 
tremely low in the cistern as to make me feel 
grateful when we were vouchsafed a heavy 
dew. 

Thus passed the early Summer months. 
Ere Autumn came an adequate replenishment 
for ordinary purposes, but Autumn had come 
and gone, and still Aquarius daily crossed 
the mountain meadow with that which was 
intended for finer uses. Thus it was that I 
was led to enter upon the supreme experi- 
ment, the beginning of which, — was it not 
duly recorded in " Lamb's Tales " ? 

The time has now arrived to tell the 
sequel. The labor upon which I had entered 
proved to be more considerable than I had 
planned, and it was executed under adverse 
circumstances. We had heavy rains, and 
then we had a sharp fall in temperature and 
severe freezing. The digging was much 

294 



PASSING OF THE PUMP 

more considerable than I had bargained for, 
and was disagreeable enough to suit any 
taste; and, to make it doubly interesting, at 
some points we reached quicksand, probably 
a part of the same deposit which we had 
discovered at a much greater depth upon the 
hill. At length, however, the conductors 
were laid to the catch basin, with laterals 
here and there, the drive pipe was laid to the 
ram, the waste pipes were laid from each of 
these, the service pipe was carried to the cot- 
tage, and the several trenches were filled as 
best they could be with great, hard, frozen 
chunks of earth, for the thawing of which 
we could not wait. And now we were ready 
for the installation. 

It was off with the old love and on with 
the new. With proper ceremonies the useless 
pump was drawn from the well. 

" Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, 
As his corse to the rampart we hurried," 

but it was a scene which was not unaccom- 
panied by sad reflections. As I watched the 
process I had a feeling — 

" A feeling of sadness and longing 
That is not akin to pain, 
And resembles sorrow only 

As the mist resembles the rain." 

But it does not answer to surrender our- 
selves to feelings such as these; and turning 

295 



PASSING OF THE PUMP 

from the old to the new, we watched with 
more than equal interest the setting of the ram 
in its place and the connection of the pipes. 

The critical moment has arrived; the valve 
is pushed down, the water splashes out. upon 
either side, but is immediately shut off by the 
rising of the valve into its seat; at the shock 
it falls again, and then tap, tap, tap it goes, 
and the current is set in motion up the long 
pipe and to the waiting tank in the attic. 

I cannot at this present season comfortably 
lie on my back in the pasture and hear the 
music, for the snow is too damp, but when 
the night is calm and all other sounds cease, 
I can stand on the veranda and listen to the 
tap as the little fellow beats with his — foot, 
shall I say? — one hundred and fifteen times a 
minute, day in and day out. Or I can stop 
at the foot of the ladder which leads to the 
upper regions, as I frequently do, and listen 
to the petty stream as it falls into the recep- 
tacle prepared for it. 

And in conclusion, I am happy to reflect 
that some things can be done as well as others, 
and even, at times, a great deal better. 



296 



XLI 
THE GUEST BOOK 

HAVE you ever learned what interest 
there is in a record of those who 
come within your gates from month 
to month throughout the year? I 
do not mean of the butcher, the baker, the can- 
dle-stick maker, or even of the plumber, for 
these, though interesting, like the poor are 
always with us, and they are a trifle monot- 
onous. Nor do I mean merely of those who 
come " to stay " ; who break bread with you, 
and partake of your salt, and try the virtues 
of your soporific air. But, while including 
these, I mean also those who from love, or 
friendship, or courtesy, or public interest, or 
curiosity, or whatever motive, seek you out, 
and give you the pleasure of extending a wel- 
come, the right hand of fellowship, and the 
freedom of the country. 

The freedom of the country, not of the 
city. Paradoxical as it may seem, I know 
that there may be, that there are, homes in the 
city, homes that are even actual homes, where 
people have a real family life, and occupations 
which they enjoy, and in which their friends 

297 



THE GUEST BOOK 

are sometimes allowed to participate. A day 
or two ago my heart quite warmed over a 
paragraph in my daily paper, in which a New 
York lady detailed the experiences of her 
first visit to Brooklyn during, the daytime, 
and the refreshing recollections of early youth 
brought to her mind by seeing an occasional 
dwelling house which showed life through the 
windows, a woman or a girl, or two or three, 
sewing or reading, and appearing to be actually 
at home, — and plants growing, which did not 
seem merely for show, and other indications 
that the world was still young. Yes, there 
are homes even now in the city, although I 
have walked for miles and miles along the 
streets and seen no signs of them, but simply 
houses. And a Guest Book might be some- 
times kept in such homes and have its interest, 
as well as in the country. 

But it is in the country that you will find 
the real home. And when people go thither, 
they go purposely. Doubtless it is often 
merely curiosity which impels them, but there 
is nothing criminal in curiosity, quite the 
contrary. The civilized world would be a 
very different world indeed and a very inferior 
world, had it not been for the discoveries made 
and the changes effected in consequence of the 
exercise of curiosity. Pandora may have been 
a very restless creature, and I have no doubt 
that she managed to bring us into a peck of 

298 



THE GUEST BOOK 

trouble, but who wouldn't have opened the 
box ? And what a monotonous time we should 
have had if it had been kept hermetically 
sealed! But this would have been impossible: 
I am sure that some cracksman would have 
reached the inside of it erelong, even if the lit- 
tle jade had not lifted the cover, or given 
Epimetheus an opportunity to do so, whichever 
it was that really happened — if either did. 

Some of my guests, quite naturally, do not 
fully understand why I want their signatures, 
and liken my Guest Book to a hotel register. 
And then I have my little jest which I get off 
upon every opportunity — that I should not 
know to whom to send the bills if I did not 
have the names and addresses. Isn't a re- 
cluse entitled to have his own private little 
joke as well as the habitue of the club? And 
is it just that this pet joke, after once using, 
should then be discarded as a thing of naught ? 
Out upon such niggardliness ! Let us be more 
generous with our good things. With a little 
combing and trimming and dressing, with a 
dab of rouge here and a bit of henna there, 
they ought to serve for many a year, like good 
wines growing ever riper and better with age. 
Only, one has to be careful, and not repeat 
them too often in the same presence. A new 
audience is essential to the entire success of a 
joke. I had a friend once 

" — a kinder friend has no man," 
299 



THE GUEST BOOK 

who had a way of saying " Bim " when he 
heard the familiar first words of the old story. 
That was a good plan, but we cannot always 
have such external support, and are therefore 
compelled to a certain degree of circumspection. 

Nearly two weeks had elapsed after the 
house became a home, and it was almost the 
Ides of March before the Guest Book was dug 
out of the case in which it had been packed, 
and made ready for use, and it is now the 
twenty-fourth of the following January. As 
I look over the hundreds of names which have 
already been inscribed upon its pages, my 
thought goes wandering off this way and that 
on as many lines, and concerning as many lives, 
which meet and cross and spread over the 
home field in a network which typifies that of 
the great world itself. 

Here upon the first page is Phollis, — but 
perhaps you do not know Phollis ? / do : and 
at the top of the second I find Arnchen, " with 
Wotan and Pussy willow." Wotan is not 
the father of the Gods himself, but his name- 
sake, a great big St. Bernard puppy, as big as 
a young ox, who does not know how to stand 
still, and will knock you entirely off your feet 
if you do not take care. And this was the 
first time that Pussy willow had been out that 
spring, and she was not old enough or strong 
enough to come by herself, and so had to be 
carried. 

300 



THE GUEST BOOK 

Then there is my enthusiastic neighbor who 
is sure that the right to be somewhere else is 
an inherent right, like that to life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness, and that it is only 
necessary for us to decide that it shall be so, 
in order that our persons and property may 
be carried whither we will, practically with- 
out money and without price. We and our 
belongings are to be delivered at any station 
which we may select, upon the postal principle. 
And afterward comes my Liberal Unionist 
neighbor (but I believe that I should no longer 
say Liberal, but merely "Unionist") — the 
international journalist, who tells the English 
all about America, and the Americans all 
about England, and so tends to create a com- 
mon understanding. 

There are two noteworthy cases among 
others upon the next page, and one of them 
leaves this comment, which, as the Englishman 
says, is not half-bad for an impromptu: 

" Sweet Summer, trailing garments of rich green, 
Could not add beauty to this perfect scene. 
Enwrapt in Winter's snow these hills possess 
A grand yet most pathetic loveliness. 
And he, who of all Dames loves Nature best, 
Has chosen well at Underledge to rest." 

Upon the next page I find among others 
the name of la Signora Alba ; — in what strange 
land may she be now abiding? — and another 
name which is a curious reminder of Maxi- 

301 



THE GUEST BOOK 

milian's ill-fated Mexican empire, — that of the 
musician of his Court. And, again, upon the 
next I fall upon one which recalls a vain and 
perilous search for that supposed Florida vol- 
cano which has so long tantalized observers 
from afar, and a great mishap thereupon at- 
tending; and another, that of a former United 
States Consul at the Piraeus, who, looking off 
from the terrace one superb day, warmed my 
heart with more than classic heat by compar- 
ing the scene before him with that of the vale 
of Tempe. 

In the collection upon the page following 
appears the autograph of the lady of the 
Manor, and that of a prodigal of an artist, 
home returning nevertheless full of years and 
of honors, and fully conscious that a candle is 
intended to be set upon a candlestick, and not 
hidden under a bushel. And among those 
upon the next is one subscribed to the follow- 
ing verse — which I subsequently met again in 
one of the later Autumn's harvest of books : 

" At the edge of the hedge is a hawthorn tree, 
And its blossoms are sweet as sweet can be, 
And the birds they sing there all day long, 
And this is the burden of their song : 

' Sweet, sweet is the hawthorn tree ! ' ' 

Two pages later is a name which carries my 
thought far away to Russia and to Count 
Tolstoi (as indeed the previous one might 
have done), and then there is a whole flight of 

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THE GUEST BOOK 

" Ancients " from far and wide, come to 
alight for a moment on the familiar field. 
And in a little while appears our genial cos- 
mic philosopher, the author of the " Begin- 
nings," Professor Fiske, and then at one jump 
as it were, we are landed at Reykjavik in Ice- 
land, and I am reminded that if in the late 
summer I have Greece in view out of my front 
door, according to Professor Keep, in May I 
have had an Icelandic Valley spread before my 
bay window, according to Madam Magnusson. 
And then Yale College puts in a claim, in view 
of the weather-beaten ancestral home below 
the cottage, and soon after comes a bewilder- 
ing flight of butterflies escaped from the clois- 
ter, by which my eyes are dazzled. 

Here are two names, whose bearers are 
fresh from the faraway city — the fresher for 
being now far away, for one of them quotes of 
this present abiding place, 

" In which it is enough for me 
Not to be doing, but to be." 

But I cannot pretend, as one after another 
I turn them over, even to select wisely from 
these pages with their various suggestions of 
individual, of time, and of place. Here upon 
two consecutive pages are casual visitors from 
Absecom, New Jersey; Tarpon Springs, 
Florida; Farmington, Connecticut; Toronto, 
Canada; New York City, Baltimore, Min- 

303 



THE GUEST BOOK 

neapolis, and Songaloo, Mississippi. Think of 
the spider tracks made over the land by these 
individuals as they went to and fro, of their 
casual meetings, and their partings, as of 
" ships that pass in the night." And what 
stones they bore about with them, stories of 
which, here and there, I have the clew. With 
some, the tale has been told, the denouement 
reached, and they are now but marking time 
in that little space upon the last page which is 
filled with stars — thank Heaven that it is 
filled with stars! — ere a firm hand shall one 
day write at the foot, Finis. And some — how 
many! are only hesitating on the verge, peer- 
ing curiously in between the leaves, wonder- 
ing, yet unaware how the story may run, or 
whither it may tend. And yet others, all 
unconscious in many instances it may be, are 
in the ©tiran unb ©rang, in the very stir and 
stress of the drama, day by day making their 
exits and their entrances as if they were living 
common workaday lives among their fellows. 



304 1 



XLII 

OVER AND UNDER THE 
SNOW 

IT is of no use. I have been badgering 
my brains and teasing the vocabulary to 
find some words that might indicate the 
beauty of the morning, but in vain. 
Fandy Saekel and those of his cult would, I 
know, try to help me ; they would gladly turn 
inside out the whole establishment of an 
Artists' Colorman, and give me a sample card 
of all the pigments therein contained fresh and 
raw, in smears and chunks, but I will have 
none of it. Cazin, indeed, might arouse in me 
a thrill of response, and I can but think that 
if the nouveaux would sit humbly at his feet 
for a few centuries they might in the end 
imbibe something of his spirit and be prepared 
to go to Mother Nature with hopeful hearts. 
Even then they should stop and breathe a little 
prayer, or at least pulse a silent aspiration, 
that they might be preserved from all libel, 
detraction, and misrepresentation. 

The snow began falling upon Tuesday 
afternoon, coming from the mountains in the 
far northwest, stealing softly across the valley, 

305 



OVER AND UNDER SNOW 

and at last gently sifting down upon us in tiny 
crystals, so fine as to be scarcely perceptible, 
and with great spaces between: falling with- 
out haste and without rest through the wind- 
less air, hour after hour far into the dark 
night. Gradually it covered thinly the smooth 
places, and filtered between the blades of 
grass, and changed the country from brown to 
gray, and from gray to white. Then when 
the morning broke, the sunlight flooded the 
dazzling fields, and every object stood out 
boldly, sharp and clear. 

But with the coming of another day, the 
clouds drifted together again, and again began 
the silent fall, slow but steady, like a sprin- 
kling with fine powder until you examined it 
closely, and found each tiny grain to be a 
crystal gem. And so it continued on into the 
night, and on again through the next day, 
with the north wind gradually rising until the 
particles seemed to go past me horizontally, 
and I wondered how and where it should be 
that they would finally sink to rest. And 
soft curves and wreaths were built up around 
the cottage, with thin, delicate edges, which 
seemed to need but the breath of a mosquito 
to send them tumbling in a thousand impon- 
derable fragments. Only for an hour did it 
come in downy, fleecy flakes, such as fill the 
air, and make one feel that the sky is really 
falling. 

306 



1 



OVER AND UNDER SNOW 

But this morning! Ah it is that of which I 
wish to write, but I cannot : how the sun shone 
out in his glory, and gilded the nearer slopes, 
and threw a warm glow over the scattered 
shrubs and trees and the great stretches of 
forest, and warmed up the expanse of sky, 
from the blue above through the softening 
shades of green to the vaporous and almost 
imperceptible clouds over the hills; and then 
beneath, the ethereal haze of infinitesimal ice 
crystals floating in the air, a diaphanous veil 
over the mountains and the valley, which 
glowed and palpitated with opalescent hues, 
the very sublimated essence of the mother of 
pearl. The blue was on the hills, but such a 
blue! No — let me not attempt to paint with 
words that which only could be felt. 

And all was peace. Beneath the snow were 
many things: and some we had laid away in 
sorrow, alike beyond expression, and now and 
then the memory recurs with an intensity too 
bitter to be borne. But under the snow we 
know that the grass is finding safety from the 
strenuous cold, and that the slender root- 
fibers of plant and shrub and tree are grop- 
ing in the soil for their bread of life : and that 
in the seed kernels the mysterious processes are 
going on quite silently which herald the com- 
ing of the stem and leaf and blossom and fruit 
of another year. And the soft fallen snow, 
like a downy blanket on a winter's night, keeps 

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OVER AND UNDER SNOW 

all alike quite snug and safe; but more than 
that, — it brought with it from the skies, fast 
bound within its colorless crystals, the floating 
elements from the air which shall in the com- 
ing days mingle with those in the soil to vivify 
the slumbering germ, and bring its life to a 
happy consummation. 

And so we lift up our eyes into the hills 
from whence cometh our help, and we feel 
that it is all a mystery, and know that we can- 
not understand it the least bit in the world; 
but looking out upon the glory which is, we 
surrender ourselves like little children to the 
good cheer which is tendered to us in such 
ample measure, and cannot help but dream 
that it is but a faint and faltering vision of the 
glory which shall be. 



THE END 



308 



SEP 27 1904 



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